That's a butte, Jerry!

(sorry, couldn't help myself... )

 

Actually I don't think it is a "butte" but rather a rock formation known as "Independence Monument" which is the feature formation of the Colorado National Monument where we will be doing a tour and Poker Run of Friday Morning. Seems like kind of a coincidence, doesn't it?

 

Looks like we are all going to have Premiun Seats for the only local Fireworks display preceeded by a Concert tomorrow evening. I think we will get together for a group sort-of dinner after the Wine Country Tour and then enjoy the Concert and display.

The Independence ONE Car show is shaping up nicely for Saturday and ought to be a lot of fun followed by a Banquet to the 928 Guys and Gals and for some of the car show folks as well.

Hope you can be here with us.

 

It's still kinda purty.

 

Here is Independence Monument as viewed from one or two view points. We will be taking this rim rock drive to see this formation and all the rest in the Colorado National Monument tomorrow morning on the Monument Tour and Poker Run.

 

In the first picture, the one I think we used to draw the T-shirt graphic, you are looking just West of North. The city in the background is the Town of Fruita, CO.

In the second picture you can see that the vantage point is about 90 degrees to the right, looking just North of East, and the city in that background is Grand Junction. The Colorado River, formerly the Grand River, is just outside of the Monument; the City is just beyond that and at the top of what looks like the darknmess of the trees in the city you can see a group of white buildings, which is the Ariport. Our Hotel, The Clarion Inn, is just below the airport in the picture. You can't make it out of course but that is where it is; and this shows the proximity of this part of our Function.

In fact, the Wine Country Tour for this afternoon is also in the picture at the very right of the settlement area in the background, in and around the town of Palisade, CO.

Wish you could be here.

 

I am here . Got in last night. Looking forward to seeing everybody.
Jerry where is the car wash area, maybe I can beat the crowd?

 

David's post next above here was probably the kick off of this 928 Function at the Junction for me. I grabbed the bucket, the hose and nozzel, the car wash and some hand towls that I had set aside together and darted over to the Clarion Inn, about a mile from my house, and met up with David to set up the car washing location in the back parking lot of the hotel for him to wash his Shark.

Right after that is about when the caravan of Rocky Mountain Sharksters arrived from the Denver area. They all went across the street to Wendy's for a bite of lunch and then we departed to the Palisade area in a caravan back down the Interstate for the Wine Country Tour. We spent the afternoon tasting and buying a few bottle of some really nice wines produced right here in what is broadly referred to as "The Grand Valley." The word "Grand" that makes up the names of a lot of stuff around here is derived, not from their being so big or great, but from the former name of the Colorado River which was the "Grand River."

We finished the Wine Tour and headed out for dinner as a group to The Ale House, although that was set up for a sort of sit-together group at the last minute, and the word about where it was missed one or two couples who couldn't find us. After dinner we were treated to Premium Seats in the Ball Statium for an outstanding fireworks demonstration put on by the city's Parks and Recreation Department. Most of the other demonstrations and private displays had been outlawed due the the heat and dry conditions that were prevailing in this area lately. The selection of the seats for our group turned out to be good because they were just under the overhanging Press Box above us and sheltered all of us from the 5 or 10 minute surprise rain shower that everyone was treated to before the display. The shower was a few minutes earlier that I had put in for, but the missed cue was still nice to cool the air a bit for the following display.

As soon as I can find my camera in one of the boxes of various stuff that I got home with last night, I'll post a few pictures of parts of our 928 Function, and I'll tell you some more about the Friday and Saturday events and why they, for me, and I hope the others, stand out.

It's now Sunday morning and I kind of slept in, so I think I am falling down on my Hosting duties by not going over to the Hotel to give everyone a nice send off. I guess the closing remarks at the Banquet last nite will have to do.

 

Here are a few of my pictures of some of the group during the Wine Country Tour and a few of the cars that helped make the tour a lot more fun that just tasting wine.

 

Here are three more of the end of the Wine Tour, including my red 90 GT, and then two of the start of the Colorado National Monument Tour and Poker run on Friday morning.

 

We divided the group into two smaller groups to depart the Visitors Center at the Monument so that as we stopped at each of the view points we would not be over crowding each place. Here are some of us at a couple of the points and along the way, and a picturte of the top of one of the many formations seen there.

 

The middle picture here is actually the gathering of 928s at the end of the Monument Tour where we gathered to regroup for the trip back to the Hoetl to join with others for the start of the Gateway trip for the Auto Museum there. The other pictures in this post are simply some mor snapshots I took during the Tour. I couldn't resist showing the feature formation again, Independence Monument. That " Butte" is a Beaut, isn't it?

 

Here are some of the sharks lined up in the parking spaces cordoned off just for us in front of the Auto Museum. A couple of these pictures show that I am not as smart as I should be since I was one of the first ones there I should have been as smart as Marc White and parked my car in the only shaded spot in the spaces given to us.

Right outside the front door of the Museum they have this really nice Ford GT that struck my fancy, probably since I also now have a GT. And, right inside they have another of my favorite Fords, a 57 T-Bird.

The first two pictures also show my Son, Tim's, 77 911S that he and his friend, Jeff Stoddart, came along in for both the Monument Tour and the Gateway trip.

 

The Gateway Auto Museum is the personal car collection of Mr Hendricks who created the Discovery TV Channel. He has some really unique cars including at least a couple that are one-offs. Here are a very few pictures that I took. I was probably negligent in my picture taking and didn't take as may shots as I should have.

I'm expecting that some of the other participants who I saw taking a lot of picures, are going to join this thread with their's, likely after the get home and get rested up from the trip.

The gold Corvette-looking Olds is a one-off concept car that is said to be worth maybe $12 million and is highly sought after by GM.

 

One of the things that I had expected about the Museum was that we would all be able to casually walk through the place and see the cars and read some of the placards, probably in an hour or less. However, apparently since I had set this up as a group program, they not only cut their admission in half almost for each of us, but they had Greg, who I think is one of the curators there, give us a personally guided tour of the whole Museum which lasted nearly three hours. He has an amazing knowledge about all of the cars there it made this event so very outstanding for all of us.

All of this came about after the drive there in our 928s which included a 45 mile segment of highway (141) through the Unaweep Canyon which, although it is fairly straight, has some very interesting 928 style twists and turns which, at 928-like speeds, made for some very fun travel, to put it lightly.

On top of the drive, or immediately at the end of it, was a really nice lunch at the Paradox Cafe just a stone's throw from the front door of the Museum.