Hope everyone had a great weekend and got to enjoy their cars! I finally got mine clean again on Saturday- it was trashed from the trip!

So after we ate at BDubs and got some gas we were on the road. This was probably one of the most fun portions of the trip for me driving wise. It was great to cruise with a couple other cars (let alone two other cars with TEs!) instead of just on my own. It was really starting to get hot at this point as we entered Kentucky, so Kyle and I began to work on our no-AC-in-S13 left-arm tans. Meanwhile, Jason continued to cruise past us in the FD with his windows up/ AC on while making a troll face at us.

Entering Kentucky- this bridge SUCKED! We hit some bad points along the way, but I think this was for sure the worst spot we drove over. Tons of metal grating and pot holes over the entire bridge. Thankfully traffic was backed up going in to Louisville and we were able to take it slow:

Downtown Louisville if I am not mistaken:

After cruising a little bit further, we arrived at the Honda Tech Caravan Checkpoint #3 at a welcome center in Shepardsville, KY. It was SUPER hot at this point. We were all pretty stoked to file into the welcome center to get some water and enjoy the AC in the building. I am not sure how many cars were there, but I would say 150-200 if I had to guess. Thankfully it wasn’t all Hondas and we didn’t feel too out of place.

This was the first point on the trip where I noticed how much attention our cars were getting. I was pretty shocked- I expected the attention for Jason’s FD, but not for all three of the cars. I guess a group of three cars from the midwest rolling on TEs is a pretty crazy sight or something! haha. It was awesome though for sure- it always feels good to get positive feedback on a project like that.

Here are a couple shots we found that someone snapped at the checkpoint (Awesome pics BTW):

So that was pretty awesome. I got to chat with a few other dudes that drove down from Michigan as well, but from the West side of the state. After hanging out there for about 45 minutes, the cars started to roll out. We were towards the back of the pack and ended up being apart of the caravan for about 15 minutes before we were left in the dust, lol. A lot of those dudes were weaving traffic and driving all silly-like, so we just took our time. A little too wild for old folks like us.

I thought this guy’s plate was pretty funny:

The passenger in the Del Sol was a young man by the name of Paul- pretty cool guy. He was hanging out the side of the car getting some shots of us as we were cruising along. He ended up finding us at the event and got my info to send me the shots. I’ve never really had true rolling shots of my car, so I thought it was pretty cool:

You can see the rest of Paul’s pics in my Flikr album here: http://tinyurl.com/3u6y4b2

This leg of the trip felt a bit long. I think we were all just anxious to arrive at the hotel at this point since we had been in the car all day. Alicia had the right idea:

Finally… Tennessee:

We got stuck in 5 o’clock traffic while passing through Nashville, so that was pretty brutal.

Once we made it through that it was smooth sailing for the last hour of the journey. We arrived at the hotel in Murfreesboro and checked in, then headed over to Outback for some bloomin’ onion action. After that, we hit up the car wash to get the cars ready for Saturday morning.

People sort of gave us crap for staying in Murfreesboro, but it honestly could not have been a better place to crash. At every intersection we saw about five or six modified cars- it was pretty crazy. I usually don’t see that many in a week up here in Michigan. There were only about four other cars at the hotel, so it was nice and chill. You tend to get pretty exhausted at IA, so it’s nice to come home from the event to a nice, clean, quiet hotel- none of that crazy La Quinta in Nashville stuff for me.

A couple beautiful snaps from the car wash, lol:

After the car wash, it was back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We planned to meet at 6 AM in the lobby the next morning to roll out to day 1 of Import Alliance! Thanks for reading.

Damon