Carlisle car show and auction

On Fri night at dinner I asked Rick if I should print the driving directions to the Carlisle car show and auction or not, since I knew he'd been there before, and he suggested printing them, so I did. The website had directions from several major east coast cities, but since we wouldn't be coming from any of them, I also printed driving directions from our town from Mapquest. And that's when I realized how long it was going to take.

Rick told me it should take about 2 1/2 hours to get there, but Mapquest said it would take 3 hours and 37 minutes. Gulp. That's 7 hours of driving for a 3 hour car show. Oh well, we'd already decided we were going, and truthfully, I was still excited despite the extra time in the car.

Despite having the website directions and the Mapquest directions, Nick said he would bring his portable GPS along too. However, despite showing a full battery when we left at 9:30 am, the GPS unit's battery went dead about an hour after later, and Nick didn't bring the cigarette lighter charger, rendering the GPS useless.

As we followed both sets of directions we realized that at one point the directions differed, one sending us north and the other sending us south on the same road. Both sets of directions reunited again a few turns later, so it simply appeared to be 2 different ways to get to the same highway. Since we were generally headed in a northwest direction, we chose the north option.

Unfortunately this put us on a 4 lane road running through a town, with lots of traffic lights and vehicles entering and exiting the road. Oh well, we took advantage of being on a secondary road and filled up the gas tank. It was easier to do it then than to have to exit the highway to do it later.

Shortly after continuing on the secondary road we saw a sea of brake lights and came to an eventual stop. One of the 2 lanes going north was closed off with cones due to non-existent road construction. Apparently PA leaves the road blocks up on the weekends even though no road work was being done on the weekend. We inched along for several miles, all the while lamenting that our 3 1/2 hour drive was going to be more like 4 hours, or possibly more. We finally freed ourselves from the back-up and continued on without incident.

The fairgrounds in Carlisle were well-marked and there seemed to be adequate parking. The weather was overcast when we started out that morning, but was nice and sunny when we arrived. I was glad I'd followed my instincts and worn shorts, since it seemed to be in the 80s and there was no shade. Wish I'd thought to bring some SPF though.

The 4 of us wandered up and down row and row of vintage cars, ooo-ing and aah-ing at the specimens in mint condition and the hard-to-find models. Since our digital camera is broken I wasn't able to take photos. However, here's a very good idea of the kinds of cars we saw.

We had a great time looking at all the great cars and getting an idea of prices, condition, and availability.

We had dinner in York, then continued our uneventful ride home. We decided to go a different route home that would avoid the secondary roads, keeping us on highways the entire time. We dropped Rick & Nick off at 9:30 pm, and we got home at 9:45 pm. It was a long day, but a fun one.

Crush du Jour: Adam Rodriguez