Indy Fun (Cicero, IN)

We took our time this morning, but didn't want to delay too long to get on the road to Indy.  We took a leisurely trip through downtown Indianapolis to the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Jim is such a race fan that this was like a pilgrimage for him.  We attended the 1984 Indy 500 and the 1994 Brickyard 400, and even toured the track once back in the 80's.  But it's always nice to return to soak up the history of this huge place.  Here's a couple of pictures of the south end of the track, turns 1 and 2.

(click on any of these pictures to enlarge)

There's a wonderful museum inside the track, with rooms full of cars and motorcycles.  It was cool to see many of the winning cars of the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing," the Indy 500.

A small portion of the cars in the museum:

Here's the car that won the first Indy 500 in 1911.  It averaged a screaming 74 mph for the 500 miles, and took 6 hrs and 40 mins to finish the race.  Today they run the race in about 3 hours.

Here's two of A.J. Foyt's winning cars, from 1967 and 1977.  It's interesting to see the difference in the look of the cars that are 10 years apart.

There were a few NASCAR cars.  Here's Richard Petty's car from his last season in 1992.

We passed on the track tour, since we did it once before.  If you're a racing fan, we recommend you don't miss an opportunity to see this wonderful place.  Just the sheer size of it is awesome!  All the racing we see today owes it's existence to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway... it all started here.

When we left the Speedway grounds we wandered around downtown Indianapolis.  It's a really clean town and the traffic wasn't bad.  It was fun playing tourist.

On the way to the RV park we stopped at Walmart for a few items.  Not very far from the campground there's a golf course called Pergatory.  It's quite unique with mounds and sand traps.  I just thought it was interesting, so took a picture.

All in all, another fun day!