Start Your Engines!!!

Yesterday we had planned to go to the Ocala RV show which is just down the road from us and then with all the changes and having to go get our pump put on Fedex, we ran out of time.  So today is gonna be the day to go wander around all the RV's.  But first thing was to view a rocket launch.  It was set to go at 2:45 am  so I set the alarm for 2:30 am and we bailed out of bed and into the Jeep and drove down the road where we would have an unobstructed view.  This is a test of the rocket that will be manned from now on as they travel back and forth to the space station.  This one will actually be docking with the space station before returning back to earth.  Rather than a shuttle, they are now capsules that operate a bit like drones and will land back on earth where ever they need to be.  It is neat to know that the next time this one goes up, it will have astronauts in it.  Really hard to take pictures so this one is just for proof that we saw it.  It is the white light in the middle of the picture.  There is something chilling about watching it go up there.  I always thought they went straight up but they don't.  They follow the trajectory of the earth so this one turned on a North east bearing to meet up with the space station, which was over Iraq when this rocket launched.

Then back in bed by 3:30 and up by 9.   Then it was off to the RV show.  

The RV show was actually in a Horse Park outside of Ocala.  This particular area of Florida is where all the race horses who are anybody are born and raised and trained.  Lots of ranches with full fledged race tracks for training.  Lots of money around this area as well.

We did what everyone else does at an RV show.  We walked until we were ready to fall down.  It was a hot afternoon so we were glad we left Charlie back at the RV in the AC.  This show was not really that crowded so we got to look in lots of RV's.

We stayed at the show until 4 and then headed for home for a quick bite of supper and some time with Charlie before we left him again.  He doesn't care for the loud cars at the races so we generally leave him at home.  On the way home we went by this gas station.  Its not hard to see that car racing is a big part of this area of Florida as well.  We are only an hour from the Daytona Speedway. This gas station has its own little racetrack on the roof.   They are real size models.

After supper we headed about 10 miles down the road to Bubba's Speedway.  It is a nice little "D" shaped track but only 3/8 of a mile so there is lots of congestion on the track with 22 cars running.

We got there in lots of time and got some good seats.

They started the qualifying at 6 pm and it took forever because they had a couple rain delays which took about 30 minutes of drying off the track.  I was the hero for remembering to pack the umbrella's.

The main race was a 100 lap race and the prize was $10,000.00!!  It was good racing with only a few fender benders, nothing serious.

One of the things that amaze us is the age of some of the racers.  This is fast, tough racing and you have to be a good driver just to stay on the track.  They had 2 young racers here tonight.  One was 16 years old, and the one in car #6 was only 14.  Both of them finished the race but they didn't win.

Although there are cars from all over the States, the eventual winner was #40 who was a local racer and a fan favourite.  He has won this particular race for 3 years in a row so everyone was happy with the result.

And once more I couldn't resist taking a picture of the bathroom,  You have to be quite confident to hang out here!!  They do have a couple stalls for the shy ones.

Our view today was of an empty Courtesy Customer Comfort  Area.  I guess everyone but us got fixed before the weekend and no one has rolled in yet for the Monday fix.  We had a big day so bed felt really good tonight.