A Visit To Daytona's Bud Shootout

Thanks to Tom at work, Katrina and I were able to attend the Bud Shootout stock car race at Daytona Speedway. Talk about a bunch of fun.

Yep, what an experience...

We started off by having breakfast at Cracker Barrel, which was conveniently located right next to the race track. Katrina is sitting like this because she is about to reach for a geocache that I remembered was hidden here. This would be geocache find number 699 for us.

Here we are at the track and heading up into the stands to locate our seats and to watch the first round of practice.

Oh yeah, this is definitely a great spot to see the races.

After practice was done, we took the tram that goes through the tunnel under Turn 2, in order to have some fun at the Fan Zone situated in the infield.

Ah, here we are. The Fan Zone at Daytona.

One of the neat things about this area is how you can get up close to the drivers and the cars without being in their way. Every one of the service bays has a large glass window so you can see your favorite driver and his team do their stuff.

After peering at the cars through the windows, you can climb a stairwell to walk above the service bays.

While you're here, you can buy yourself a coke to the left or a mixed drink to the right while you watch the jumbo-tron TV next to the tote-board.

And, you can hang on the handrail and look to see if your favorite driver and team are hard at work outside of their service bay.

Who knows, you just might see something...

A TV show was being broadcast as we walked by. I think I can see Darrel Waltrip!

At one point, Katrina and I drifted into the Victory Lane celebration area and stayed there for a while to watch the second practice session.

Here is Luann's favorite driver, Michael Waltrip. Definitely an equal opportunity employer.

And here is Katrina's favorite driver, Dale Earnardt Junior.

Katrina was strategically positioned so she could get this picture of 'Junior' walking back to his car hauler.

After she scored her Junior photo, it was time to have lunch, so we dined on a hotdog, a cheese steak sandwich and 2 sodas, all for the low price of 20 dollars...

We also brought a travel bug (geocaching traveler) with us and we took a bunch of pictures of it while we were at Daytona. After we finished eating, we caught the tram back to the outside portion of the track and walked over to the Daytona Experience attraction for a look around and to...

...see the Dale Earnhardt Senior memorial plaque and statue in front of the attraction.

These gloves are bronze, but Katrina decided to make this picture look like she was wearing one of the gloves. You can see the travel bug and a penny at the fingertips of the gloves.

A closeup of the gloves, penny and travel bug.

For this shot, Katrina decided to hold the TB up for me while a snapped the picture. This turned out to be a 'virtual' geocache, so I fulfilled the requirements to log this cache and now we have officially found 700 geocaches...

And here we are inside the Daytona Experience. Since we were there while the ARCA race had begun, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

The wall of Daytona 500 Winners.

We found that there was even an Earnhardt room in the attraction with this pristine, 'Ole Number 3 sitting there.

I snapped this overhead picture on the wall in this room (which is so old, it doesn't show the new Fan Zone we were at).

This copy of the News Journal was hanging on the wall by 'Ole number 3.

After we left the attraction, there were plaques imbedded in the sidewalk for the Daytona 500 winners. Of course, I was interested in the one for Dale Sr.

It was kind of neat to see this sand sculpture being built for today's event.

When we made our way back to our seats in the stands, Tom snapped this shot of a surprised Katrina.

So, I whipped out my camera and fired one off too...

The introductions have been going on, but I was more interested in the Budweiser Clydesdales pulling the beer wagon.

I was impressed with the dalmation. He stayed exactly in that spot from the back stretch of the race track, all the way around to the beginning of the 1st turn (after all, the track is 2.5 miles all the way around).

And of course, when you have horses pulling a wagon, you need to deal with their 'exhaust emissions'...

And then, the introductions picked up the pace.

As each driver was announced, flames would shoot up from the stage...

And when the next car manufacturer was announced (and more drivers appeared from behind the wall), fireworks shot out of the top of the stage system.

The battery was almost gone on the camera, so we had to be careful with the amount of images we were taking. Of course, we had to get a shot of Dale Earnhardt's Pit Crew in action...

Unfortunately, Dale Earnhardt Junior was involved in an accident, not of his doing, and had to retired early from the race. This is the interview near his car hauler.

And Kevin Harvick won the Bud Shootout. This is the smoke clearing after his very smoky burnout... Well, this was a ton of fun and will be remembered for a long time to come.