2024.04 – National Corvette Museum or bust!

2024.04 – National Corvette Museum or bust!

The title summarizes it well.  Back in the spring of 2024, we planned to travel to Bowling Green, KY to visit the National Corvette Museum’s annual Bash event.  Wouldn’t another 2,000+km road trip in the Corvette be great?

Background

Every five years the National Corvette Museum organizes a caravan for participants to organize groups to journey to the museum to celebrate its anniversary weekend (Labour Day).  For the 30th anniversary, held in 2024, I was part of the committee organizing for those starting from the Province of Ontario.  Part of our duties included finding routes, landmarks, locations and hotels to stay in during our drive to Kentucky.  The Museum hosts several other events throughout the year with the first of the driving season being the annual Bash, held at the end of April.  I looked at the event as an opportunity to test out and confirm the route before 100+ vehicles would be driving it.  So we packed up the Corvette, and started driving the route.

This would represent the third time we’ve taken our Corvette back to its manufacturing plant and museum.

Route

When traveling from Ontario towards Kentucky, two obvious routes appear:

• Travel southwest through Ontario, cross into the USA at Detroit, MI and continue south.
• Travel through the Niagara region to cross into the USA at Buffalo, NY and continue on a southwesterly route toward Kentucky.

Back in 2019, the route selected was the latter as the group made stops in Cleveland, and Dayton, Ohio along the way.  This time around we took the former route to provide variety.  Our planned stops were:

• Frankenmuth, Michigan
• Pratt Miller Engineering, New Hudson, Michigan
• Gilmore Car Museum, Hickory Corners, Michigan
• Lafayette, Indiana

Frankenmuth

The first day of our drive was good.  We stopped outside of Frankenmuth at Birch Run where we searched for deals at the outlet mall.  We then made the short drive into Frankenmuth to take in the town’s two draws:  a Christmas ornament and accessory store (Bronner’s), and; have a Fried Chicken dinner served family style at Zehnder’s.

(The German heritage of the town shows through on the architecture of its Main street, however, I don’t see the connection between Fried Chicken and German food.)  We arrived near the end of the dinner rush at Zehnder’s and although the food was plentiful, the chicken wasn’t anything special.  We thought for a moment “Um, did we just sign up for not-so-great food for 200 people?” The portions were generous with the below picture showing most of the dinner items.

Onward!

We stayed overnight at an area Hampton Inn.  Nothing interesting to note, beyond a conference room was used for breakfast as renovation work at the main atrium and breakfast area was closed during our visit.  It was a chilly start to the day, complete with flurries in the air!

All packed and ready to journey towards New Hudson, complete with the defroster and rear defroster on (I think it was the first time using the rear one ever!).

Our second day didn’t go as well as the first.  After merging onto the Interstate about a mile after the on-ramp there was a boom from the rear of the car, quickly followed by a *CLUNK*, and then sounds that can best be described if one were shaking a tin with a bunch of rocks, or nuts and bolts in it, *CLANG* *CRASH*! Uh oh.

The car was able to get to the next exit where I was able to get the car off the interstate and off to the side of the road where I wasn’t blocking any live lanes of traffic, and in an easy spot to be towed.  A call was made for a tow truck (FYI: CAA towing benefits works in the USA), and then a shop needed to be found.  Quickly I recalled that there was a Chevrolet dealership beside the outlet mall in Birch Run.  A call was placed.  “Hi.  Do you repair, um, older Corvettes?”  The customer service person quickly answered “How old?”  Once I said it was a 1998 the response was reassuring “Well, we’ve got a 2001 in right now. I haven’t brought my C5 in yet, of course we work C5s.”

A quick decision had to be made.  Throw in the towel, figure out how to tow it home, abandoning the trip, or, carry-on in same way?

I wasn’t in the mood to give up.  We’re in the US state that is home to the birthplace of the US automobile industry, surely there has to be a lot more part selection and mechanical know-how in this state.

While we waited for the tow truck both of us remarked that having a breakdown on a cool spring day is much easier to manage than if it was during a heatwave in summer.  Ever prepared, we found a few blankets to stay warm.  The tow trucker operator was a pro, as he hooked up, and effortlessly — without scraping the bottom of the car — up on the flatbed faster than I could imagine.  From there it was short ride up the interstate to the next exit and to be deposited at the dealership.

When life gives you lemons

With our vehicle kaput in Michigan we needed wheels.  The dealership offered up a loaner vehicle, however returning it would be an issue — it’s hard to return a vehicle on a Sunday, when nobody would be around to accept the keys.  I found out that Flint had a regional airport complete with car rental desks.  After returning the loaner, and grabbing lunch we were back on track in a rented Nissan Rogue.  We drove by Pratt Miller, confirming construction determined our route to the Engineering firm behind Corvette Racing.  The late start prevented us from exploring routes out to the Gilmore Museum, as we drove south towards Kentucky.

Gas Station, Texas Style

Something new to Kentucky, is a chain of gas stations from Texas called “Buc-ee’s”.  They don’t offer any truck or transport fueling, its focus is on automobiles.  Thanks to YouTube I knew what to expect.  We arrived where the station that had many, if not over one hundred gas pumps, but our reason for the visit was the store.  This isn’t your typical convenience store, it was HUGE!  Fresh food is constantly being prepared and made, along with housewares, camping, and automobile accessories to browse.  On the packaged food side I’d guess that at least half of the items were store branded.  The place felt like the chain took the saying “Everything is bigger in Texas” and made it their corporate motto.

After our lengthy stop at Buc ee’s, we found a few non-interstate roads that got us over to Bowling Green. Best of all, the roads were devoid of traffic making it a pleasant drive through Kentucky.

National Corvette Museum

Exit 28 off of Interstate 65 is the gateway to everything Corvette related in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  Immediately turning off the highway you’re presented with two options as illustrated by the billboard above.

The rest of our time attending the bash was good.  We attended a few sessions, walked through the museum, and before we knew it, it was time to make the drive home. One highlight for us was attending a dinner banquet where members from Corvette Racing were in attendance to share stories and answer questions.  One neat detail shared during the dinner was that during testing of the C8R the vibrations in the vehicle were so great that it would cause electrical issues. (Obviously once discovered, it was addressed)

Here’s a few more pictures from our time in Bowling Green:

The drive home was uneventful, however the story on the car was anything but…

When they looked at the vehicle, and the cause was obvious — the transmission.  After 271,000km or so it bid us farewell.  As much as I wanted to complain, after 26 years over two owners, I can’t complain.  The challenge then turned into finding a supplier that actually had one in stock, and would ship it.  It was over six weeks before the car was ready for pick-up, with three of those weeks caused by multiple suppliers ghosting the dealer when the order was placed.  The new transmission had a different whine to it, but once in the car and driving back from Michigan, it was all smiles to be back in the car.  It was a gorgeous day to pick up the car.  A fellow committee member was unbelievable in his assistance — he spent the day driving me out to pick up the car, and then accompanied me home to make sure there was no new issues.

For my curiosity, the shop sent pictures as the work progressed.  Here’s a rare slideshow of the rear of a C5 after tires, exhaust, transmission are removed.

Now it’s certainly ready for some more mileage.  The vehicle turned 272,000km on the way home.  I joked to the service advisor as I left “This better last at least another 25 years!”

Other Corvette related Posts

2019 – Ontario Caravan to 25th Anniversary of National Corvette Museum

2024 – Ontario Caravan to 30th Anniversary of National Corvette Museum (coming soon)