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Updated 8/16/09 ColoradoAugust 2009 Update: T-shirts may be ordered until August 21st. Ignore what is on the flyer. All Colorado participant must pick up their Caravan registration packets Monday evening or Tuesday morning at the Aurora Sports Park. Packets are NOT being mailed to you! For those caravans coming in from the West, Kathy Guerrie has a very nice lunch stop planned for Grand Junction. The caravan will meet up at the Mesa Mall in Grand Junction. Kathy has arranged for a 10 cent per gallon discount at the nearby Stop-N-Go. She is also working on arranged lunch deals, so check in with the gang when you pull in. Please enjoy the beautiful scenery between Grand Junction and Denver on your drive. It is truly spectacular. The stop in Denver will be at the Aurora Sports Park (map below) again. We finally managed to get that set in the last couple of weeks. The Aurora Sports Park is on the far east side of Denver at I-70 Exit 286 (Tower Rd). Take a right at the light at the top of the ramp and go just about 1 mile south to Colfax Ave. Hang a left onto Colfax and the entrance to the Sports Park is to your right at the next stop light. We’ll be waiting for you! We will have a BBQ dinner ready starting at about 5:00 PM. Due to the economy and lack of Sponsorship, there will be a $10 charge per person for the dinner. However it is darned good food supplied by the same people who did it for the 50th caravan, by Frank's BBQ. Direct Impressions has also come up with another knock out t-shirt which is available now. There is a picture and a link to the t-shirt order form below. We will wrap things up at the Sports Park about 8:30 PM or so because Tuesday day is a long day. We will congregate at the Sports Park again on Tuesday morning. The park will open at 6:00 AM and we will have pancakes and other breakfast items ready by 7:00 AM. Coffee & Juice will also be included. Chris Cakes of Colorado will be doing the cooking and you will be pleased at what you get for your $6.00. The City of Aurora Parks Department has assured me that they will have the sprinklers turned off. We will plan on departing about 8:30 AM for Kansas City, Missouri. You are on your own for lunch as Kansas is a very large state with lots of little towns along the way, but no large ones in the area where a lunch stop would fall. On Wednesday morning, we will connect with the Kansas/Missouri caravan and plan on departing from the Home Depot / Wal-Mart parking lot at exit 21 along with the other caravans at about 9:00 AM. I believe they have a lunch stop planned off of I-270. Some of us are going on to Effingham, Illinois for an overnight stop at Mid-America and some are heading on to Bowling Green from this point. From all of the planning committee in Denver, we hope you have a wonderfully memorable journey and we hope that you meet lots of new friends along the way! January 2009 Update: At last, things are moving forward. The caravans from the NW US will arrive in Denver on the evening of August 31st after a lunch stop in Grand Junction, Colorado. We are still set to end the day at the Aurora Sports Park and a map will be forthcoming. We are still planning a welcome meal at the sports park and we are hoping that we can get enough sponsorship to make it free to participants. However, with things the way they are, it may be just low cost instead of free. We are also planning to have entertainment at the sports park, but that too will depend on sponsorship. We are still working on a donation type pancake breakfast set up for Tuesday morning. Hotels in Denver are:
Departure will again be from the Aurora Sports Park on Tuesday morning. Because of the long drive, we will leave at 8:00 AM headed for Blue Springs, Missouri. Lunch on Tuesday will be on your own. Hotels in the Blue Springs area are:
The launch point in KC is currently set to be the Bass Pro Shops parking lot. We are tentatively planning to depart about 9:00 AM headed for Effingham, Illinois on Wednesday night and a visit to Mike Yeager's Garage. Arrangements in Effingham are still not firm. There is also the potential for an arranged lunch in the St. Louis area, but nothing is firm there at this point either. Thursday morning, we will head from Effingham for Bowling Green. Again, lunch will be your responsibility. The route will be down I-57 to I-64 and over to Evansville, Indiana. We'll cross over to Kentucky on I-164 and then catch the Audubon Parkway and then the Natcher Parkway to I-65 and up to the Museum. We should arrive in Bowling Green mid-afternoon. Be sure to check the main caravan and Museum web-sites for hotel accommodations in Bowling Green. This trip will be a huge amount of fun and your friends who are going on the Caravan will never let you live down missing it! Let me introduce myself, I'm Tim Barnes and this will be my fourth National Corvette Caravan! This will be the third National Corvette Caravan that I've lead. The caravans are experiences that are not to be missed! It's pretty early in the game to have many details on the arrangements yet as most of the places that we want to reserve aren't taking reservations for 2009 yet. However, the plan at this point is to do pretty much what we did for the 50th Anniversary Caravan.
We will plan to leave Denver from the Aurora Sports Complex (on the far east side of Denver) first thing Tuesday morning September 1st 2009. Unfortunately, it will be a very long day as there is not much between Denver and the Kansas City, Missouri area that will accommodate the huge number of participants that we expect. The drive will be around 600 miles. We probably will also leave everyone on their own for lunch as well. The only town large enough to host a lunch across Kansas is Hays, but waiting until Hays for lunch has not worked out very well in the past. Unlike previous caravans, the Kansas caravan will probably be stopping overnight in St. Louis. It is a 3+ hour drive to cross Missouri, so I doubt that we will be catching up with that caravan. I'll have to see if I can recruit anyone in the KC area to set up a meeting point for us to jump off from in the KC area. My plans for Wednesday are to head straight to the museum from KC via I-70 and I-64 catching the Audubon Parkway in Kentucky from Evansville, Indiana and then catching the Natcher Parkway into Bowling Green. The drive through Kentucky across the Natcher is beautiful. This should put us into Bowing Green in the late afternoon just in time to check into your hotels. Lunch on Wednesday will also be on your own as it is just too difficult to arrange for a lunch stop for hundreds of cars. No matter how you stack it, participating in the caravan is one of the best experiences that you will ever have and with a little luck and your support of the museum, we may be in for the grand opening of new parts of the museum. Please remember to support the museum building campaign! Tim Barnes Please make sure you are signed up for eNews to keep current on the latest news: |
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Monday night, August 31st, 2009, we'll plan to have a sponsored BBQ - hopefully at the Aurora Sports Center
to welcome the other caravans that will be stopping in Denver for the night. We should have some deals worked
out with hotels in the general area as the date gets closer.
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