We Picked Up The Camaro Today

Here it is, the Camaro that we had special ordered, finally in our possesion. It took some time, from ordering the car on November 20th, 2009 to watching it go through the process of being built then shipped by train to Nashville, Tennessee and from there, it was trucked to Bristol. We weren't sure if the timing would work out, but the Camaro finally made it to the dealership on February 27th, 2010, so we were able to drive it home from there.

Now, why did we go all the way to Tennessee for our car? Actually, there were several reasons... First, was that we couldn't find anybody in the state of Florida whom would sell us a Camaro at less than $4000 above the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), but when I checked on the internet, Bill Gatton in Bristol, Tennessee said they would sell it for list price.

The second reason is that we prefer to drive it from such a distance so we can get it through the break-in period in a controlled manner, rather than doing it in stop-&-go traffic, which isn't so good for the drivetrain. And the side benefit is that we were able to visit a place that is typically a hotbed of NASCAR activity (for the Dodge Magnum, we went to Hickory, North Carolina to a dealership that was next door to Dale Jarrett's race shop), and we could 'rub elbows' with fellow race fans. If you don't think that Bristol is loaded with racing fans, then you simply haven't been to Bristol.

And now, let's begin with the story...

After catching a flight to Bristol Thursday night, we were greeted by this view Friday morning. We called the dealership and they told us that although the Camaro was loaded onto a truck, it wasn't out for delivery yet. From what they understood, the truck might show up later in the afternoon....

So, we went geocaching. Here is one we found by the Bristol Welcome Center.

We also took some pictures of painted murals on the brick walls. Some of them are pretty nice.

There was this huge one across the street from where we were and it shows Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a clear shot of D.E. Sr.

On our geo-ramblings, we came upon this train bridge with icicles dripping from the ceilings of the tunnels under it.

And when we got top-side, there was an engine hanging out in the rail-yard.

Eventually, we called our salesman, Jaime Widner (said like: Wide-ner) and we stopped by to get the paperwork together in preparation for the Camaro's arrival.

While we were there, I came across the tallest toilet plunger I had ever seen. I mean, this thing must have had a 6-foot handle on it...

And when you sit down for your 'command performance' in the restroom, you are greeted by this sign in the window across from you. Apparently, somebody let the whole dealership know that he had been in there... and cleared the lot.

Unfortunately, the car didn't show up by 4PM, so we decided to head out and get some other things done.

Since we had promised to get one of the people helping us out at the dealership a choice selection of chocolates, we decided to look for confectionary possibilities at the Bristol Mall. When we got there, we came across a pile of icy snow in the parking lot and Luann told me that before we had left for Tennessee, Bradley had asked if we could make a snowman for him. Unfortunately, the snow had pretty much melted into a chuck of hard-to-work-with ice, so we tried to make an 'iceman' for him instead. Well, like I said, we tried...

As the sun went down, we toured downtown Bristol and saw this really neat sign that has been in place since the early 1900s. I wonder if Bristol could be 'A Good Place To Live'... What do you think?

Here is a picture of a train station at night. This is the spot where we got the shot of the engine in the railyard earlier.

And here are a couple of signs we came across during our travels.

After this, we turned in for the night, hopeful that Jaime would be calling us with some good news tomorrow...

And he sure did... There it is, just like we ordered it.

I got this picture of Luann, while she was working on synching her iPhone with the bluetooth hands-free phone unit in the car.

And then she got a picture of me driving off for the first test drive. The car was quite responsive, but I didn't want to put Jaime through the 'spin cycle' in our new car... Next was Luann's test drive and Jaime said that she drove it a bit harder than I did. After this was done, we went over and signed the paperwork.

Finally, with all of the legal stuff done, we headed over to the Tri-Cities airport to drop off the rental car, then we stopped off at Cracker Barrel nearby for lunch. At about 4PM, we headed out from Bristol on our way home.

Of course, we did a little sight-seeing on the way, stopping here and there. This spot is a scenic overlook on I-26 in South Carolina.

I discovered some soft, powdery snow on the backside of this wall, so I went to work building Brad's real SNOW-man.
C-c-c-c-cold!

And here is the finished work. He's got some eyes, a nose and some arms too... Weeeee-Haw!

And actually, he was all of this tall...

The overlook was great with a few photographic opportunities.

I took this shot to show you the ice that was building up on the roads. Whenever we hit a steep downgrade, I had to shift the Camaro into manual-shift mode and downshift it so the rear end was dragging us down the hill. Even the semi tractor-trailers were slowly crawling down the hill. We made it with no problem though. I guess my experience driving to and from Minnesota in 2007 prepared me for nasty, cold-weather driving elsewhere.

Here is one of the those runaway truck ramps that we came across... Hey wait, does that sign up ahead say, "Runaway Toyota Ramp"?

Ah, the sun is going down as we make our way home. The car is handling nicely and the seating is comfortable, even on the long haul.

It's kind of neat to see how it lights up inside. There is some special 'ambient lighting' that comes on in the gauges and the door panels and it looks real neat, although it is aqua in color (not red?) so we may do something about that.

All-in-all, the whole trip really was fun. We were able to pick up the car, break it in on the drive home and even did some geocaching in a state we hadn't cached in before.

So, we got the car home and now we need to get it registered and have a custom tag ordered. As usual, there is so much to do and no time to do it in.

On to the next page.