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After today, I’ll finally quit talking about Road America – at least for a while. The pressure is now on from all of my raving about it. On Monday morning, I got a private message from a reader through Facebook, saying that I had talked him into it and that he will make the trip to Road America next year. I hope he likes it, otherwise I’ll get blamed for bad advice.

How could he not like it, though? It’s got history, charm, scenery, great food and some mighty good racing. Another thing that strikes me is that all the fans are so friendly there. I don’t think it’s because only friendly fans go to Road America. It’s because everyone there is in such a good mood and so happy to be there, the niceness just come out in them.

Although I had hoped to get away from our hotel around 8:00 Monday morning, it was actually closer to 9:30 am before we pulled away. But we had to stop to get our annual selfie in front of the main gate as we passed the track on our way out of town.

About twenty miles from Elkhart Lake, we stopped at a Walmart in Sheboygan. I had promised a co-worker I would bring back some Spotted Cow, made by New Glarus Brewery. They do not sell any of their beers outside of Wisconsin. While there, I figured I would stock up for myself for the summer. A cold bottle of Spotted Cow can be mighty tasty in the hot Tennessee summers. That is one of the advantages of driving. You can stock up on the way back.

After I got my beer fix, we stopped in Racing at O&H Bakery in Racine, so that Susan could get her Danish Kringle fix.

We weren’t done with our stops. We had to stop at the Mars Cheese Factory in Kenosha, just north of the Illinois-Wisconsin state line. I’m not sure why we always stop there, but we always do. It’s like a rite of passage. Susan bought some cheese curds there and a few other cheese items and a couple of sausage type items. Here’s a hint: If you ever go to Wisconsin and want to get Spotted Cow, don’t get it at the Mars Cheese Castle. At Walmart, it was $30 a case. At the Cheese Castle it was $45. Those are state line prices.

By the time we got on the road for good, it was after noon and we were still in Wisconsin. Of course, I missed the exit for I-294 in Chicago and we ended up taking I-94 through downtown Chicago. While it was good to be up close to all the famous buildings, as we sat still in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I would have preferred the dull drive along the outskirts on I-294. Oh well, I should have been paying better attention or at least have been running my GPS on the phone.

With all of the delays, all self-inflicted – we didn’t get home until around 10:00 Monday night. It didn’t help that it rained for about the last three hours of the trip. After unloading and unpacking, the alarm to go to work Tuesday morning came awfully quickly. So as I sat down to write Tuesday night, my brain was kind of fried. This was about all I could come up with. But Susan was kind enough to contribute a lot of her extra photos from our trip for one last look at Road America before we turn the page to Mid-Ohio and other items of interest regarding the NTT IndyCar Series.

Maybe by Friday, I will have rested up and regenerated a few more brain cells.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on June 23, 2021 at 4:02 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.