Say what you want about Valentine’s festivities, but for me, February has long been about the return of NASCAR. The Daytona 500 is a high holy day for many to be sure, but it is actually a culmination of several weeks of racing events at that track as well as an entire offseason of changes and preparations for the teams, the drivers, and the sport as a whole. On a larger and more existential scale, programming such as the Busch Clash, Twin 125s/Duels, and the start of the schedule for the three top national touring circuits ushers in spring before any baseball is ever tossed at a major league training camp elsewhere in the state. It may be cold in Maryland, but watching drivers duke it out under the Florida sun reminds us warmer weather here is right around the corner.

Okay, that’s enough of well-worn clichés. This is the Caroline Review, so I better get to the point about some local angle before readers move on to the weddings and death notices. I’m giving Green Gardenites a mission, actual tourism edition, should they choose to accept it:

VISIT ALL THE NASCAR TRACKS.

This is not something I set out to do originally. In fact, I started off as an IndyCar fan after meeting Rick Mears at an early age. I got to sit in his show car; a news reporter took my picture, which has survived in my office display case for some forty years. I watched the Indianapolis 500 annually into adulthood and gleefully toured the track my first time through the city in 2008. I attended the Baltimore Grand Prix twice and lived to tell the tale. Along the way, however, this type of racing faded into the background as NASCAR reached its zenith of popularity in the mainstream of national consciousness.

Living on the Eastern Shore had much to do with that transition as I too ultimately made the switch. Much of this shift was acknowledged in retrospect, but it is worth sharing how I arrived at the reasons for attempting the aforementioned personal quest in case you feel the same tingles justifying your own racing journey. My first brush with NASCAR was another driver appearance, this time Kyle Petty. He was signing autographs near the Boscov’s at the Dover Mall on race weekend in 1987. I didn’t know who he was, but my parents did. Kyle was slightly less successful than his father over the course of his career, but always seemed to do well at our home track. Good for him — he remained a favorite of ours despite the ups and mostly downs of his several decades in the top tier of stock car racing.

Fast forward to 1988. I remember sitting in my grandparents’ den in the middle of winter. It was too dreary to play outside and so windy I vividly recall the swimming pool cover violently flapping like it was about to tear off and fly away. Inside, Daytona qualifying was on television. They had cable tv long before we did on the farm, so this would likely have been my only exposure to NASCAR until CBS broadcast the “Great American Race” at the end of Speedweeks. For some reason, in my mind I can still clearly see Terry Labonte attempting to put his Budweiser car on the pole while basking in the warmth of the Florida sunshine. A month or two later, I got to visit Daytona while on a motorhome vacation with that side of the family and was greatly intrigued by the high-banked turns that seemed to defy gravity. Impossible I thought, even though Bristol Motor Speedway was not even a blip on my radar yet.

My first Winston Cup race experienced in person was actually not until 1992. My father decided that I needed to see Richard Petty compete in person before he retired at the end of the season, so we went to Dover Downs that spring. Harry Gant won at the ripe old age of 52, stealing the King’s thunder. Dale Earnhardt finished second.

Little did we know that year would also mark the beginning of Jeff Gordon’s Cup career, not that I ever cared. Many people did. Students in my high school argued “The Intimidator” vs. “The Rainbow Warrior” much more passionately than any academic subject. What piqued my curiosity with this turf war [asphalt war?] was the juxtaposition of a veteran “bad guy” driving a black car that was generally respected if not worshipped by NASCAR faithful and a squeaky clean upstart who enunciated in his interviews and praised Jesus in Victory Lane yet was nearly universally despised by fans. It reminded me of the heel and face “heat” dynamic of professional wrestlers, especially as that line started to blur in the squared circle right around the same time. See also: the New World Order.

Looking back I suppose I was hooked by that point but what put me in front of the television for good on race weekends in 1994 came from an unlikely source: church. I could be pretentious and claim it was 2 Timothy 4:7 that did it for me: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” is what the New International Version states. With that said, I was actually attending a worship service in Centreville at the time. The truck I drove could get in literally one station clear on the radio, 94.7 WDSD, which incidentally was the one that broadcast NASCAR. I listened to the pre-race show as I drove back to Caroline County and typically would get back to the farm as the field was doing parade laps just prior to the green flag. We acquired a satellite dish that same year and so I started tuning in each chance I was able.

So it went for the next several years. I attended every Dover race I could. I took pictures at dealerships all over Delmarva where there were NASCAR show cars on display those weeks. I called time-out while umpiring Ridgely Little League games because the haulers, especially those of Sterling Marlin’s team, sometimes used Maryland Route 480 through town to get to Delaware. I figured out which roads were more frequently used for the tractor trailers to get to and leave Dover and set up a lawn chair to wave, boo, photograph, or gesture rudely at each that passed. I was not the only one: I swear the entire population of Barclay and Sudlersville were in on that “secret” racing rendezvous.

Another fast forward to 2001, when I made my first trip to Tennessee. My destination was the Gatlinburg area off of I-40, but I became giddy when I looked at the map and realized I-81 on the way to Dolly Parton’s stomping grounds sent me through Bristol. It was Christmastime and the speedway there was holding a nightly promotion called “Fantasy in Lights” that took visitors on a self-driven holiday decorations tour around the grounds. I assumed attendees would just be directed through the parking lots but was mightily impressed when the route took the procession down the adjacent drag strip, only to be outdone when we were funneled up to the “coliseum” gates — and then waved ONTO THE RACETRACK ITSELF! Obviously no one was allowed to go up the banking (I saluted the minivan that feigned a try for a half-second) as the cars are almost literally sideways thanks to centrifugal force during actual races but it was pretty darn cool nonetheless and easily the highlight of the trip.

While the death of Dale Earnhardt put a damper on the rest of that year and a number of questionable decisions by NASCAR incrementally decreased the Southern flavor and alpha-male competitiveness of the sport in the seasons since, I have never missed a chance to see a race or to tour a track when the situation presented itself. So now for a chronological top ten on the march to completing visits to every single NASCAR track ever:

I was vacationing in Nashville over the holidays in 2006. Literally [and properly], nothing touristy was open on Christmas Day so I made the trek to the distant suburb of Lebanon to survey the superspeedway there. It was a Busch Series venue then but is now being used as a Cup track. Lebanon, by the way, is where the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain began and is headquartered today. It’s also home to Cumberland College, to whom Georgia Tech administered a 222-0 gridiron beatdown in 1916.

The spring night race at Richmond was rained out and postponed to the following day in 2007. I had just finished graduate school, and still riding that high, woke up and immediately decided I was going to drive to Virginia to see the event in person. I got there ten minutes before the green flag, parked right outside the track, and bought tickets for pennies on the dollar from people who were not able to make the rescheduled event. It worked out perfectly. 

I stopped by Talladega for the first time in 2009. The gates were closed but not locked. I am reasonably certain the statute of limitations has expired, but not wanting to incriminate myself, all I will say is I have some really good pictures of a certain Alabama superspeedway. 

A decision was made to visit all the race shops in the Charlotte area in 2010. I had been by the track there before but never inside. To my surprise and delight, there was something called the Summer Shootout held there each Wednesday and I had timed it just right. Several hours worth of Legends cars and Bandoleros culminated with school bus races featuring local weathermen at the helm. It was as hilarious as it sounds. 

There are pictures to prove I ate dinner with Danica Patrick in 2011 when she was just starting out in the Nationwide Series. Best of all, it was at a Buffalo Wild Wings.

Southrons like myself are dedicated fans of the Allman Brothers. I saw the band perform at Merriweather Post Pavilion but without Dickey Betts. I tracked him down to a festival in Pennsylvania in 2013. Oddly, purchasing tickets to his show came with two free passes to the Pocono Cup race the next day. I was able to make contact with a childhood friend who lived nearby; we went to both the concert and the race and had a good time catching up.

I went to Las Vegas for a wedding in 2015 and stayed several days. This time, unlike Talladega, the gate at LVMS was wide open and I was able to drive all the way to the infield and pit row. I rescued a feral puppy in Utah on the same trip, another memorable highlight.

My favorite movie ever ever ever in the history of ever is Smokey and the Bandit. It was filmed in northwest Georgia in 1977. A fortieth anniversary celebration was organized in 2017 with an aging Burt Reynolds as the guest of honor. Clearly a man of destiny, I was chosen at random to ask him a question on stage prior to a stunt show at Atlanta Motor Speedway; I can now die a happy man. I am sure he was thinking the same thing about our chance encounter when he passed away a year later.

In the most Chad Dean thing you will read all month, I decided to defy the COVID restrictions at the height of that foolishness in 2020. I drove to Texas and back, noting that outside of Maryland life continued as usual. There were no mask mandates the farther west and south I traveled; the buffets were open, as was just about everything else. In your face, Lockdown Larry. Anyhow, one of my most memorable finds was what was left of Texas World Speedway outside of College Station. The venue was state of the art when it opened in 1969 but was not used by the Winston Cup Series after 1981. The directions included turning off of a paved road, then turning off the road completely. I cautiously but triumphantly steered my SUV through a field thick with brush until I came to one solitary abandoned shed-like structure and the vague oval outline of a track that had long since been reclaimed by nature. Satisfied with my detective work, I also visited the site of the 1993 Waco siege (part of the Advanced Placement United States History curriculum I teach) and then the hometown of Don Henley — the greatest living American musician and the pride of Linden in Cass County — before reluctantly returning to Ridgely, but at least with a collection of Eagles songs and solo albums on the radio.

We were installing new flooring in our house in 2021. The local Lowe’s locations were all out of what we needed. Their website, however, indicated that a store near Syracuse had the necessary supplies in stock. I immediately volunteered to drive up there; my wife was impressed with my heroism, not knowing that the NASCAR circus was at the Watkins Glen road course in western New York that weekend. I guess she knows now.

Your mileage, literally and figuratively, will vary as you attempt the suggested bucket list. Like me, you may find that while NASCAR can be the cornerstone of Americana that it aspires to be, perhaps the real story is the life experiences you will blissfully absorb on the way to your own personal finish line with stock cars as the backdrop. Good luck on running your race to completion.