Shenandoah Valley Tour

Day two – We were scheduled to check out the Omni Homestead Resort, but I was kept up late on an unscheduled phone call, so we decided to sleep late and then explore the Roanoke transportation museum just a couple of blocks away from our hotel. After breakfast we did just that.

The Virginia Museum of Transportation was amazing. It is in Roanoke’s hundred-year-old freight station downtown. It has several areas of different types of transportation including not only model train exhibits, but actual full-sized trains of many types and eras of railroading.

In addition, it has an aviation gallery, models of buses for highway transportation, models of wooden sailing ships, along with a circus diorama. All of these are interesting and informative.

Of course, the area we were most interested was the automotive gallery containing examples from the 1930s to today.

After our day exploring downtown Roanoke, we had dinner at a place called Billy’s and made certain that we would get plenty of rest before Wednesday’s big day of driving to Viginia International Raceway and getting some track time on one of my favorite tracks.

Day Three – After our breakfast we headed to the parking lot and attended the drivers’ meeting that began at 8:45 before we cranked up our car and the Garmin GPS to be guided to some fine back roads that led us to the VIR.

We arrived in a large parking lot so that when everyone arrived, we had a group meeting where we were all welcomed to VIR and were told how we would enter the track at the south paddock area and be led around the full course with speeds that approached 90 m.p.h. with no passing so we wouldn’t be required to have racing helmets and other gear that we would if it was an HPDE or actual race.

For me it was like driving on a very familiar track as I had driven it for a couple of decade’s worth of HPDE weekends. I knew the racing line and had a lot of fun even with the restrained speeds. VIR is a beautiful, well-maintained track with the full course being 3.27 miles long with over 140 ft. elevation changes as well as some challenging corners.

The Evo IX really enjoyed being on track again and was so much fun even at the saner speeds we traveled at.

After many laps of enjoyment, we had lunch at VIR’s manor.

We then followed our Garmin’s guidance and returned to the hotel for more socializing and a wonderful dinner.

Day four – following breakfast and the morning drivers’ meeting we headed off to our first location of the day in Christiansburg, VA, a place called Duncan Imports & Classic Cars. You can look at it as a museum-like collection of cars in several large buildings, but also an opportunity to actually buy a car that you see there.

“At Duncan Imports & Classic Cars, our mission is to provide customers and car collectors with a fair, friendly and fun experience when buying a hard-to-find Japanese Import car, a right-hand-drive Japanese minitruck, classic antique car or muscle car. We not only sell these vehicles, but we also have many cars on display that are part of Gary Duncan’s collection.”

Here are some photos of just a few of the cars that are there to view, be amazed at, and perhaps purchase for your collection.

I could hardly resist these right-hand -drive Mitsubishi Evos.

Here are more cars…

This is just a small sample of what they have and really, they don’t mind if you just want to look. You just might find the car of your dreams there.

After that we headed to lunch at the Chateau Morrisette. A delightful venue to eat at. After lunch we headed to Stuart, VA, and (wait for it) the Wood Brothers Racing Museum!