Friday, April 20, 2012

Tulare Antique Tractor Show

Friday: (04/20) Lou made sausage eggs and hash browned potatoes for breakfast. Dawn and i finished packing and left about 11:30. Lou and Meili were off to a rummage sale. Lou decided not to leave town due to her allergy attacks. Our oak tree may be the culprit but she decided there might not be anywhere to escape to if she goes. Dawn and i were in no hurry. The show is tomorrow. We stopped in Gilroy at the outlet mall and a couple of thrift stores. we had lunch at the Black Bear Diner. I had clam chowder and Dawn had a cobb salad. Our next stop was in Los Banos for a look at a thrift store. And we stopped in Madara at another thrift store before heading on to Fresno. In Fresno we stopped at Rasputin's, a used video and music store. We picked up a couple of DVD's there. We had dinner at Carrow's Restaurant. I had their pot roast sandwich and Dawn had broccoli soup which we topped off with a shared rhubarb cobbler. We headed on down to Tulare and stopped for the night at Quality Inn. we tried a couple of other motels but they are all full due to the show. We should have made reservations but we really didn't decide to go today until this morning. We have to get up early, for us, tomorrow. the parade starts at 09:30.
This trip is quite different. We usually travel by RV to this show. This time we're on the road in the new little car. We did get about 35 mpg over the mountains at 70-80 mph. Both those figures are a bit different than when we are in the motorhome.

Saturday: (04/21) Up early, or so we thought. We wanted to get to the Antique Tractor Show by o930 when the parade started. It opened AT 8am. 8am seemed like we'd have to get up way too early so I was aiming for about 9am. I didn't set an alarm but woke up at 6:30 per the hotel clock. We showered and cleaned up some and I took some of our stuff down to the car. The motel had a free breakfast, such as it was which was served until 9am. No problem, we could do that. All was going well. We went down for breakfast at about 8am. They were closing up. It was really 9am. The hotel clock was still on Winter time. Fortunately we were allowed to serve ourselves breakfast as the attendant hadn't thrown out the leftover sausage and eggs yet. With breakfast done we stopped at a nearby store and bought some bottled water. We'd used up what I brought down coming down. I thought I'd get a six pack so we didn't have to pay event pricing. The store didn't have six packs so I bought a 24 pack. Our car is small and I tried to avoid carrying so much water. We headed over to the Expo grounds, about 5 miles away. There was a full parking area so we parked at the far edge and went to the nearest entrance gate. There was a slow moving line with about a hundred people in it. Some very nice gate attendant said that there was no wait at the next gate at the other end of the lot. We walked to the other gate and got right in joining the parade about 20 minutes late. No problem though.

Tulare Antique Tractor Show Tulare Antique Tractor Show
Teaching the future farmers how to drive a tractor seems to be a theme.  It's a long parade and we got to melt in the HOT sun for the next hour and a half watching the tractors stream by. They are fun to watch. And then the trucks parade by before it's through.

Tulare Antique Tractor Show Tulare Antique Tractor Show
An entire family on a tractor train. A custom wheelbarrow on the right.

Tulare Antique Tractor Show Tulare Antique Tractor Show
These folks do have fun with their tractors.

Tulare Antique Tractor Show
Also a truck parade.

After the parade we restocked our water supply from the car. Sitting in the hot sun we had used up the six bottles we brought in. After the parade the tractors all return to their display parking spaces. Every now and then their owners feel frisky and jump on to tractor and take a ride around the grounds so there are always things buzzing around. There is also a big swap meet with real junk, not commercial imported junk. Lots of it is tractor parts and old equipment but there is also all other sorts of junk. There is also a building with commercial displays. The building was the only place to escape from the heat. Dawn and I had lunch at Dorthy's Kitchen.  I had the homemade peach cobbler with fresh churned ice cream. Dawn had a strawberry sundae. Excellent. I considered the chicken and dumplings but everything was freshly made and they were out at the time with three big pans on a couple antique wood burning stoves cooking more. We finished our "lunch" before they finished cooking the next batch of dumplings. They did look good though. We finally finished up looking around at 5pm when they closed. Usually we just bring the motorhome down and camp in the parking lot so we can attend both days. I think that is the best way to see it with no hurry. We had used most of the case of water bottles. We drove on down to Bakersfield after the show stopping for dinner at Milt's Restaurant. I had their deep pit BBQ dinner and Dawn had a chef's salad. I do like deep pit BBQ. Then we stopped at Aunt Helen's for a few days visit. 


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