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2007 AMO International Convention

The 2007 AMO International Convention was held in Denver, Colorado on July 6^th and 7^th. Since I was already traveling almost half way across the US for a car show and had a friend wanting to go with his oldest daughter, this ended up turning into a slightly over 5,000 mile road trip that I will not soon forget. Besides the show in Denver, we also visited Pike's Peak, the north rim of the Grand Canyon, spent a night in Las Vegas, visited Hoover Dam, the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, visited with a friend in Arkansas that I hadn't seen in a couple of years, and wrapped the trip up with the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY.

The basic route is pretty simple: From Cincinnati, OH you take I-74 north to Indianapolis, IN, hang a left at !-70 and drive until you get to Denver. Pike's Peak is about an hour or so south of Denver on I-25 in Colorado Springs. The north rim of the Grand Canyon is more driving on I-70 west (make sure you stop at the turn offs in Utah -- the scenery is amazing and you miss a lot from the highway) to US-89 south in Arizona to the Grand Canyon. We took US-89 north to Utah 9 west and picked up I-15 south to Los Vegas. I-515 east runs between Los Vegas and Hoover Dam. From there, US-93 east runs into I-40 east which runs past the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert near Holbrook, AZ (BTW, one of the tee pee looking motels that was used as a basis for the Cozy Cone in the movie Cars is on Route 66 in Holbrook). From there, it was more driving along I-40 east until we got into Arkansas. A word of warning about I-40 east in Texas -- there is a large stock yard west of Amarillo. If you are unlucky enough to drive through after it rains, you can expect a very, very bad cow (and other animal) poo smell. Dog farts smell like roses by comparison. After visiting with my friend in Arkansas, we were back on I-40 until we got to I-65 north in Nashville, TN. Once we got to Bowling Green, we stopped at the National Corvette Museum for a couple hours and then it was back on I-65 north to I-71 north which took us back home.

For the most part, the drive was nice and I didn't have any bad problems. The worst thing was dealing with U-Haul for the trailer (I towed my 67 American the entire way). The local U-Haul messed up and didn't have a trailer for me when they should have. I ended up having to make a 120 trip just to get the trailer so we could load up. Instead of leaving around 9:30 AM, I ended up not leaving until 2:30 PM which made for a very long second day of driving into Denver. The trailer was pretty nice except for a wiring problem which blew a fuse in my then new 2007 Ram 2500 (I had more miles towing than not at the end of the trip) and took out most of the trailer lights. Luckily, the friend who went with me is an electrician and he fixed the wiring (it was lightly raining as well which added to the fun and this was also the same night we passed the stock yard) and I had decided to bring the extra fuses from my old truck along (I almost left them in the truck when I sold it). The other big problem I had was using the directions I got using AAA's online Trip-Tick tool. I don't think there was a single stop where they were correct. It was especially fun when they had you go on non-existent roads. The only other part of the trip that really stunk (not counting the stock yard -- that stunk a different way) was driving along US-89 in Utah at night. This road goes through a wilderness preserve, it's very narrow, twisty, and not lit at all outside of the occasional small town. There are also a lot of deer and elk that like to run across the road and since the headlights were pointed up due to the trailer, I couldn't see very far in front. There was a Saturn in front of us that got a deer which added to the stress and also had my friend's daughter upset which made it even worse. Make no mistake: this is a very beautiful road but driving at night is bad.

Anyway, on to the pictures that were taken on this trip:

Last Updated 01/22/08 09:35:28 PM