Nascar Weekend - Thursday

I am going to post our Nascar weekend photos by days that we were there.

There are A LOT of pictures. It has taken me a while to weed through them and only choose a handful to put on the blog. (Believe me, what I post over the next few days is just a handful!)

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We woke up bright and early Thursday morning to begin our trek to Vegas. We left at 6am in order to make it to the racetrack in time for the driver autograph session at 1:30pm. More than anything, Austin wanted to meet Kyle Busch and get his hat autographed. When we got there, the line was insane. INSANE. We were at the end of this mile long line and trying to explain to Austin how we most likely weren't going to get to see Kyle because the line was too long and the session was only 1 hour.

This is when we met Ivan.

Austin was wearing his Kyle Busch racing suit and this guy approached us. He said that there was no way we would make it to the front of the line before the session was over. However, he was fairly close to the front of the line and Austin had caught his eye. He told us where he was standing and told us to approach him like we were friends meeting up and then we could jump in line with him.


Yes, we taught our 6 year old that it was okay to cut in front of literally thousands of people in line.


Long story short, we still didn't make it to the front of the line. They shut the session down just as we were getting to the front.

However, a lady saw that Austin was decked out in his Kyle gear and didn't make it to the front, so she gave him her autographed picture of him. And later in the afternoon, another guy stopped us and gave Austin his autographed picture of Kyle. So, we didn't get to meet Kyle, but at least Austin has something to hang on his wall. Nascar fans are the best.

Here's Austin in Victory Lane

Waiting in line

Thursday night there was a Nascar Hauler parade on the Strip. Luckily, we were able to walk a short block from our hotel and see the parade. We ran into Matt Kenseth's car on the way.

Kyle's truck

Carl Edward's truck

Most of the other truck pictures came out like crap.

Next, we had dinner at the Nascar Cafe.

Overall, not impressed. It just wasn't what we expected. I thought there would be a lot more Nascar gear around, on the walls and all. There was a little bit, but I just expected that there would be a ton of cool stuff.

Austin did take his picture with Ryan Newman.

And Brad Keslowski.

(Too bad we don't like him!)

And one last picture at the Cafe, in front of Dale Sr's car.

Last month, with all the talk about the 10 year anniversary of Dale's death, Austin started asking about him, who he was, how he died, etc. We watched a documentary together about Dale's life and his untimely death. It had a big impact on Austin. We both cried. It was neat for him to see one of Dale's actual cars that he raced.

Thursday night we stayed at the Stratosphere.

Here's a picture. People actually jump off of the top of the hotel for fun.

And they pay $100 to do it.

We won't stay at the Strat again. I think it's ridiculous to have to drag your luggage 10 minutes across the casino just to get from the parking garage to the hotel room. We had no fridge in our room either, which always irritates me. They did have really nice pillows. Not nice enough to stay there next time though. We only stayed there 1 night.

Will try to add Friday's pictures tomorrow!