2024.08 NCM 30th Anniversary

2024.08 Ontario Caravan to National Corvette Museum’s 30th annIVERSARY

Like 2019, we were part of a group of Corvette owners who made the drive down to Bowling Green, KY for the National Corvette Museum anniversary.  This time, it was its 30th anniversary, and we were just one of over 100 Corvette owners along for this trip to Bowling Green.  Ready for a lot of pictures?  Let’s go!

Planning

I joined the planning committee two years before the event.  The biggest challenge we had was to determine our route and our stops along the way.  This was a prime example of a chicken and egg scenario.  Do we plan the route and find stops along the way?  Or, do we find stops and then flush out the route around them?  Without boring you with details, the route had most participants crossing at Sarnia/Port Huron because our first night was at Frankenmuth, Michigan.  The second night our stop was in Lafayette, Indiana, with us then arriving in Bowling Green, KY on Tuesday — a full day earlier than the rest of the Caravans.

When I refer to Caravan, we’re talking about an organized group of people, based on geography who will travel towards Bowling Green, KY.  As a reminder, Bowling Green, Kentucky is the home to the Chevrolet Corvette assembly plant, and since 1994 the home to the National Corvette Museum.  The museum is the result of dedicated owners who wanted to create something to celebrate “America’s Sportscar”.  This is not an extension of GM Corporate brand marketing and is not directly created and supported by the manufacturer, such as BMW World or Museum in Munich, nor the Porsche Museum or Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.  This place is supported by ticket sales, members, and donations to the US non-profit.

Day one – Frankenmuth

Based on our starting location around the Greater Toronto Area, we begun our trip early, as we had tasks to do in Frankenmuth that evening.  The drive was straight-forward and we kept to the highways to get us there in good time.  Upon entering Frankenmuth you pass one of its largest tourist attractions — a Christmas store.  Bronner’s overflows with Christmas items year-round.  Want a tree?  They have a room with dozens to select from.  Ornament?  Hundreds and many that can be customized.  We weren’t the only ones who stopped in before heading to the hotel to check-in.

Our choice of Frankenmuth was based on one thing, chicken dinner.  The restaurant we chose, Zehnder’s, could easily accommodate a group of almost 200 people into a banquet room for a family style meal.

There was plenty of food to go around for everybody.  It was all freshly prepared and tasted excellent.

It was an evening to socialize and meet many individuals.  As part of the committee many people I knew only through their name and email on a list.  Our overnight accommodations were just a short walk from the restaurant and gave everybody the opportunity to window shop the many shops along the main street.

Day Two – Pratt Miller & Gilmore Car Museum

Monday morning arrived and it was easy to tell that we might have taken up most of two neighbouring hotels.

Our morning stop was in New Hudson to visit Pratt Miller Engineering.  They are the constructors behind Corvette Racing, and since 2024 the manufacturing site for all Corvettes that are in GT3 class racing around the world.

The staff warmly welcomed us in and gave us a tour of their facility beginning with a lobby stuffed with trophies highlighting race wins over their decades of racing.

Obviously, no pictures inside the factory, but it was impressive to see the precision, and detail that go into putting a race car together.  As we visited they were working on more frames.  (Fast forward to the 2025, where AWA won its GTD class at the 24 hours of Daytona, we both wondered if we saw that winning car being assembled)  After thanking our gracious hosts we departed towards our next stop, the Gilmore Car Museum.

The Gilmore Car Museum is located northeast of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  From New Hudson, we were able to take a few country roads to make this journey enjoyable, and avoid Michigan’s many uneven interstate concrete roads.  This museum has multiple buildings where each building has a particular focus.  There is easily a day’s worth of vehicles to view at the museum, however it’s also arranged so that car meets can occur and add to the museum.  For us, the staff had a central square ready for us to park our cars and easily head over to pick up our pre-arranged lunch.  A meal in the the shade was excellent, however a heat wave had moved in, and it was over 30C and humid.  As soon as we could, we headed into one of the many air conditioned buildings.

You may note from the pictures above, that the field of vehicles is almost, but not entirely 100% Corvettes.  This was the result of some participants unable to drive their Corvettes due to mechanical, or restoration issues that prevented them having their vehicle ready for this road trip.  Even though they might have been teased for their non-Corvette choice of vehicle, their company was welcomed by all attending.  The building that was the best surprise to us was a building filled with hundreds of hood ornaments.  Some were recognizable, others seemed to be the early 20th century approach to customizing a car — one of a kind.

Another building we visited was filled with Ford model A vehicles.  I didn’t know that the model was versatile to range from fire truck, to prisoner transport, to even being made out of a wire mesh such that it looked like it was made from somebody’s fence!

Another building that brought back memories from my childhood was the Lincoln building.  I recall as a kid, somebody would have my grandparents look after their late 1970s Lincoln Continental while on vacation.  The mint green colour, was exactly the car my brother and I were chauffeured around in.  It was the size of a house, and more comfortable than a chesterfield.

The final building we visited, was the Cadillac building.  It too contained many classic cars, and even had an area about Cadillac’s manufacturing contribution to World War 2.

We could have visited more buildings, however we still have several hours of driving to our hotel.  I highly recommend the museum to any car person if you’re in this area of Michigan.  Visit during the summer when all the buildings are open for visiting, as the winter reduces which buildings are open.  Our drive to our overnight destination was Lafayette, Indiana.

We stuck to the interstate where the scenery could be summed up with these two pictures:

Upon entering Lafayette, blocks of rooms were reserved at three hotels all in the same area.  Once I re-read my instructions, we checked into the correct hotel.  Even though we weren’t the first to arrive, we immediately headed to the nearby Olive Garden for dinner.

As we were leaving we found out a few couples didn’t notice that they had booked their dinner reservation for Lafayette, Louisiana, not Indiana.  As with a road trip, not everybody’s day ended without calamity:

This blowout was the result of a very large uneven transition between the Interstate and a bridge just a few miles before the exit.  We avoided this fate because I was in the curb lane looking for the exit.  Supposedly the bump in the other two lanes of the Interstate were much worse than what we experienced.  For perspective it was worthy of a Northern Ontario bump warning sign.  For the driver, having runflat tires was a saving grace as they were able to finish their drive to the hotel.  The following day a local dealership and tire shop were able to locate a replacement that allowed him to continue to Bowling Green.

Day Three – Drive into bowling green

We purposely didn’t schedule any stops on this day.  Instead, a scenic route to Bowling Green, Kentucky was proposed to minimize time on the interstate highways.  For us though, we were not in a hurry to start our day’s drive.  We spent time getting to know a few participants over a leisurely breakfast.  After checking out our first stop was a doughnut shop beside the Olive Garden, Mary Lou Donuts.

The doughnuts were fresh, made daily in the store.  We picked up a few to help supplement our day of driving.  Not being subtle, we then talked with the owner (once he finished a work call), and discovered we weren’t the first Canadians who told him that his chain has a ready market for expansion into Canada.

While most people took scenic by-ways to Bowling Green we took the interstate.  Our first stop, Indianapolis.  No.  Not for the Motor Speedway but for lunch!

Heidelberg Haus

When I was looking for food options, this place ended up at the top of the list.  Located just off the I-465, their website made me think this was Indy’s version of Hamilton, Ontario based Denningers.  The store did not disappoint as there was much to look at!  Some items, such as the coasters, made me laugh as it reminded me of items that a family friend had scattered through their house.

The store is the product of a former US military pastry chef.  Here’s the best way to give you an example of the caliber of a chef he was while in the Military:

Our lunch didn’t disappoint, and we followed the server’s suggestion of having the fresh-from-oven Strudel for dessert.  It was excellent!

Warm potato salad!

Fresh from the oven made it taste even better!

After our lunch we continued our drive to Bowling Green.  We arrived without any issues to our home for the next four nights.  One major complication of this Caravan was that we were unable to book all participants into the same hotel while in Bowling Green.  This was unfortunate as being spread across multiple hotels prevented having a central meeting spot for fellow Caravan members.  The hotel we stayed at did end up being the meeting place as the front desk setup supplies and items to wash our cars at the back of the hotel.

This was extremely useful as I cleaned the 1,500km of driving off the car, one night.  Now cleaning a car at night wasn’t what I wanted to do, but during our visit the massive heatwave continued and was hotter!  After departing the Gilmore Car Museum, the outside temperature according to the car was routinely between 33-36C, plus the humidity.  Washing at night didn’t mean it was that ‘cool’, but without the sun broiling both you and the car did make the task possible to be completed.

bowling green

The heat wave continued and was unrelenting.  Overnight it was probably 26-28C and humid, but the moment the sun arrived in the sky it soared over 30C almost instantly.  The oppressive temperature and humidity minimized our time outside and did change what activities we had planned for the week.  But there were a few items that the Caravan had planned during our time in Bowling Green.  First up, was time at the NCM Motorsports Park.  Little Miss and I went ahead in the hopes of being able to setup to properly sort drivers into similar groups to maximize their time on the track.  The staging for the rest of the group looked impressive with a very long line of Corvettes.

Now our plan to sort drivers ended the moment local law enforcement informed the track staff that the line of Corvettes were slowing traffic on the local road by the track’s entrance. Once all the vehicles were parked, at least it was a great picture of the group.

We didn’t participate in the lapping event — I got to do it in 2019, and with an almost new transmission, I didn’t want to test it out over 1,000km from home.  As previously mentioned, the hotel we stayed at ended up being the social hub with the odd vehicle getting washed.

The final event the committee organized was a social on the last night.  It was a well attended evening, time to catch-up on what people did during our time in Bowling Green.  This was a chance to thank our co-captains, who organized both the 2019 and 2024 Caravans.

NCM Museum Activities

At the NCM Motorsports Park, in addition to the lead-follow sessions, there was a vendor display.  With the heat, I felt sorry for the vendors as the heat, few attendees, like us, wanted to spend any time outside.  The museum offered shuttle buses from the track to the museum to ensure parking was plentiful for attendees.

Over at the museum, many Corvettes including the newly announced ZR1 were on display.  Just a month after being publicly revealed the vehicles were popular.  

The museum hosted many presentations and special guests.

An event we attended was a fundraising dinner for Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller.  Hosted at an event center in downtown Bowling Green, we enjoyed an evening of stories from former driver Andy Pilgrim, Gary Pratt (co-founder of Pratt Miller), and other Pratt Miller executives.  A couple neat touches included that each table had either a GM executive or Pratt Miller team member.  Our table had DJ, the assembler, truck driver, and train horn operator at Le Mans.  To conclude the event there were several pieces of memorabilia available for auction.

Saturday arrived and that meant it was time for us to begin our return trip home.  Some people went as a group towards Nashville, and then east towards the Tail of the Dragon.  For us, our drive was uneventful, and the only notable item was at our hotel in Ohio — this note in the elevator due to the social media fad of the week (or month?):

The rest of our drive home was quiet with us making the required stop immediately after crossing back into Canada — a Tim Hortons.

We arrived home safely the same afternoon and we were happy to have put 2,900km on the car for a memorable trip with 105 other Corvettes.  We’re looking forward to what 2029 will bring for the next instalment.