Kelley Park trip: days 1 and 2

We started out bright and early last Thursday morning for our trip to Kelley Park. We were three ACVWs and some other car (I believe it was a Mitsubishi Montero).

Our destination for Thursday night was Sacramento. I’ve made this drive several times in my life but I have to tell you, it is a LONG drive from here in a VW bus. Having said that, it was, of course, a relaxing and wonderfully fun drive.

Friday, morning we spent some time in “Old Sac”. I wish I would have known a little more about its history before visiting, but it was excellent nonetheless. Old Sac is pretty much what you’d guess it is—the buildings and area of town where the modern city of Sacramento began. The buildings date to the mid 1800s and now contain entertaining little candy shops, gift shops, hat shops, and the like. Our favorite was Evangeline’s—an awesome novelty gift shop where we all spent a little cash and time.

Once the money in our parking meters had run out, we headed down to Mark Merrill’s shop party. On the way, a couple of things happened. First, I was navigating in my atlas as I regularly do and could see the shadow of our antenna which I could tell had something on the top of it—unusual. I finally looked out the window…you can see the reflection on this photo.

I’m not going to tell you what it is--or what I yelled into my radio at my friends in the other cars. If you were at Kelley Park, you may have noticed this object on all of the Idaho VWs. So classy.

The second memorable event on the way to Mark Merrill's was as follows. A semi passed our caravan (which happened a lot) and as it did so, it ripped a cooler and small grill off of the top of the luggage rack of the white Westy that was with us and came bouncing down the freeway at our bus. Fortunately, the cooler made its way off of the road just in time and the grill causes minimal damage to our bus' nose. Whew. It was scary. Note to self. Keep only low profile objects in the luggage rack of our Westy.

Back to the shop party. Astonishing. Breathtaking. Indescribable. Sacred. Mark has an amazingly incredible shop/museum where he houses some rare and perfectly restored VWs. I'll let the pictures talk.

Also in attendance was a double cab that was once owned and operated by the California Highway Patrol. Suposedly black is its original color. Sweet, eh?

…and here’s my first look at a Hebmuller. Ooooooo, it was so fantastically beautiful.

Mark also had a room filled to the brim with VW toys, a library full of more VW literature than I’ve ever seen, and a hallway lined with VW ads. Words can’t do this place justice. Seriously, it was astonishing and completely worth the 15 hours of driving it took us to get there.

Up tomorrow: Red Barn.