Our Trip

I had visited Eureka Springs as a child, and once again in about 1983 when I had a girlfriend that was attending Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. In 2001 my wife Janet and I were searching for a nice secluded place to spend our 15th wedding anniversary. We decided on spending the weekend at Cliff Cottage's "Oscar Wilde's Cottage" in Eureka Springs. We had a wonderful romantic weekend and fell in love with the city of Eureka Springs. After acquiring our Corvette in 2002 we decide to take the car down for the Eureka Springs Corvette Weekend (and our anniversary coincidentally). We had such a wonderful time that we vowed to make it a yearly pilgrimage. Throughout the years we have made many friends and had a lot of fun stories to share after our return trips to Kansas.

This year I decided to document our trip on my home web site....sort of an "online scrap book". I often find myself searching the Internet for every last picture and story concerning the Eureka Springs Corvette Weekend. If you are reading this I hope that you do not find it too boring or offensive in anyway (the names have not been changed to protect the innocent). I might also remind you that I was not an English major in college! This is going to be a progressive story, and I figure it should take me a week or two to complete it. Warning...my wife tells me I have a pretty strange sense of humor so keep that in mind. These pictures in this section were taken on our anniversary trip back in late September of 2001...

The annual trip to Eureka Springs took on a completely different look this year as 2 of our 4 friends were unable to make the journey with us as they did last year. We hope that Rick Nuckolls and Rick Wolf (and their wives) will be able to join us once again next year for the 2006 event. In light of this we decided to approach the Corvette Weekend a little differently this time around. Instead of spending the majority of our time in Eureka Springs we would split the time up and spend more time at our cabin on Beaver Lake for some needed "rest and relaxation". We would travel to the lake Thursday, spend Friday night in Eureka, and then head back up to the cabin after the car show on Saturday. You will not find autocross, seminar, poker run, or road tour stories here. I guess everyone approaches this event differently, and we usually choose to attend only the festivities on Friday night and Saturday morning. What I didn't anticipate was all of the car problems this year...it was soon to be known as the "Dukes of Hazards Weekend".

After weeks of preparation we were ready to hit the highway. Once again thanks to Grandma O. for watching the house and staying with our kids during our trip to Arkansas. Thursday morning came and Kevin & Coni arrived in the 1999 C5 convertible "rent-a-rod" ready to take to the Interstate! After getting the kids off to school we left the house around 9:00 A.M. . For this trip we had done some pretty extensive repair work on our 36,000 mile 1982 Corvette. I had replaced all 4 brake calipers as they had started to leak pretty bad. I had all of the air conditioning lines replaced, and also had the A/C recharged to get it back into good working order. I had also replaced the majority of the light bulbs on the car (who cares about that you say, but most of them were 24 years old). All in all I was confident that our girl would make it down to Eureka Springs this year on her 4th consecutive trip.

Our first pit stop in Oklahoma yielded the first trouble of the trip. As we were taking the access road off of I-35 to the gas station we passed 2 semi trailer trucks. The 2nd truck had something spraying out of the back end, and it promptly covered our cars with something that looked like mud. Two weeks worth of car cleaning and detailing down the drain! Argh...

The trip on the Cimarron Turnpike was pretty uneventful except of course Janet and I laughing at Kevin trying to throw his change in to those toll booth baskets. I have written the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority to see if they could possibly install backboards to better accommodate those of us who drive lower profile cars. The Cimarron Turnpike leaves a lot to be desired, but all in all it is a pretty nice road. The roads through "T-Town" are another story. Kevin didn't notice it as bad as I did driving our older car, but it rode like a brick wagon on the proving ground roads through Tulsa. I think my teeth are still rattling. The next scheduled stop was on the other side of Tulsa for lunch.

Coming out of the restaurant past Tulsa we were met with a big problem. We could not get the driver's side door to unlock! After trying for several minutes to figure out what was going on, it was pretty obvious that it was stuck. It was then I heard those horrifying words out of Kevin's mouth, "Come on Brad we need to get going, do a "Dukes of Hazard". E-gads, how embarrassing...heading to a Corvette show and having to climb in and out of the car through the window or the passengers side door. I am not the smallest of humans so I am sure it was a rather unusual looking scene to the casual observer. If you were to glance over as I was doing a pelvic thrust to clear my rear end of the gear shift knob, you would know what I mean. Janet seemed to really get a kick out of it, and Kevin assured me that we would figure out what the trouble was once we got the car to the cabin at Beaver. Reluctantly I climbed over the center console to continue on our journey...

The rest of the trip to Arkansas was pretty uneventful. We had planned to stop in the Rodgers area to stock up on groceries and "adult beverages" for the weekend. It was while we were at the local Wal-Mart (surprise) that we made the startling discovery that we were in a dry county. I should have known better than this, but I had my mind on the General Lee's stuck door problem. We were faced with heading back south to Springdale, heading north to Missouri, or heading on in to Eureka Springs. Since our cars were "packed to the crack" we decided to go ahead and stop at the cabin and unload before figuring out what we were going to do. We were finally back in Arkansas - home for the weekend!

Once we got the cars unloaded and everything settled into the cabin, we needed to find the closest liquor store. The girls decided that they would stay at the cabin and "chill" while we were out on the run. Kevin and I went ahead and took the convertible, and after a little discussion we decided to try Highway 37 north into Missouri. We ended up in an interesting little town called Seligman, Missouri. After searching for a short while, and an impromptu tour of the town we soon found what we were looking for...

Upon our return to the cabin the decision was made to wait until the following morning before working on the General Lee's door problem. It was getting late in the afternoon, and setting on the dock down by the lake sounded better than tearing the car apart. After a little down time and a great steak dinner it was time to end the first day of our trip...