HRPT Day 8 - Bristol

We started the day off as normal and jumped into the car excited to make it to Bristol and be long haulers.  I did the normal morning check of the car and jumped in to start it to find the battery was dead.  I thought this could end up happening as the battery was old and this would tax it but I was tired of buying everything just in case.

I pushed the car back into a spot where the front of the car was accessible.  There were others there around getting ready to leave.  I had my jumper cables and found someone in a suburban who was willing to jump start the car.  Once it was running, I had my son look for an Auto Zone along the route.  We were getting an early start so most were not open.  We found one 30 minutes away with the right battery in stock.  

We pulled up out front of the AutoZone and swapped the battery without too much trouble.  With the battery swapped, it started with ease.  We filled up the car with gas and got right back on the route.  We had been starting the route 30 minutes before the established time daily and lost that lead due to the battery problems.  This made me worried as I continued to hear about Hot Rod running out of long hauler plaques each year.  This made me a little stressed but soon it vanished.

This day had the best route of the entire trip.  We went through the mountains in North Carolina (Blowing Rock and Boone) and tree lined roads that turned and weaved.  The temperatures were awesome (low 70's) for the entire morning drive.  There was a large three car wreck along the way which we passed just after it occurred.  That wreck ultimately held up most of the traffic behind us for quite some time. 

We made it to Bristol which was a shockingly small track on the inside.  It was, however, the easiest to get into and park the car.  We seemed to make it there before so many other people.  We parked the car with 1,749 miles and quickly headed for our long hauler plaques.    

There wasn't much fanfare when we got our plaques.  We luckily each received one as we both had credentials stamped for each day.  I was worried they would run out which we learned later on Facebook ultimately did happen a few hours later.  With plaques in hand, we found someone to take our picture, we then took the plaques to the car, and then walked the parking lot looking at all the cars.  There was an autocross track to run but we didn't as we needed the car to last the 15 hour trip back home.

From the Bristol Speedway, we went to Sonic for a quick burger.  We then drove fully into Bristol, Virginia reaching our 8th and 9th states for the trip.  We then headed back south to Ooltewah, TN for the night.  It was strange as we drove away and slowly started seeing fewer and fewer HRPT stickers on cars.  We continued to see them sporadically this last day but it slowed to almost nothing afterwards.  Whe we arrived at the hotel, we were at 1.979 miles.