HRPT Day 5 - South Carolina State Fairgrounds

 Today, we drove from Atlanta to the South Carolina State Fairgrounds.  While some choose to meet up at the speedway and drive the whole route, we met up with the group just a few miles along the route.  This was one of the better routes of Power Tour.  We drove through many small towns with an older fee due to the historic homes along the route.  I was surprised to see as many people as we did sitting along the side of the road to wave as we drove by.

Each time we stopped for gas it was somewhat like a car show.  If there were no cars there when you arrived, there would certainly be classic cars all around when you left.  The whole trip was fairly uneventful with the only issue being the car not wanting to start at the gas stations when hot.  I'd floor it to get it to start but that would cause one of the belts to squeal.  I guess if that is the worst of the problems we are doing good.

The last part of this route was on the highway and we were with a big group driving pretty quickly.  We broke from the group and stopped at a Sonic to eat lunch and get gas.  Even when you break off the route to eat, you still encounter others on the tour.  There were about eight others at the Sonic with everyone choosing to eat under the little awning out front rather than in their car.  

When we hit the road to finish the route, we ended up beside a similar colored 1968 Mustang coupe.  It was neat to drive along with another Mustang and did for a while.  We took the established route into the fairgrounds and he split off.  We ultimately did end up seeing and driving alongside them again a few days later.  

The fairgrounds wasn't much of a destination compared to Altanta Motor Speedway.  We parked in a grassy area and immediately went to get our tour credentials stamped.  We walked around some but the vendor booths were all the same and it was incredibly hot.  We spent more time walking the grass parking lot looking at unique cars.  We were there about 1.5 hours and then decided to head to the hotel.

The hotel was in Columbia in the downtown area.  We parked in a parking garage around a few other classics.  Since it was a downtown area, we were able to just walk to a nearby place for dinner.  We then ended up just relaxing in the room for the evening.