I love a good roadtrip. Thousands of miles to see things I haven’t seen before…or, at least, haven’t seen in a while…is a yearly goal of mine. Over the years at BangShift, I’ve had the luck to take some really good trips (and a couple of extremely long trips as well) but ever since I moved out to Kentucky, the long road trips dried up and to be honest, I was starting to experience a bit of wanderlust. I was looking for an excuse to travel when one fell into my lap last week that would take me out to Colorado and back. It would be a quick trip with a lot of work in between, so sadly, no real backroading would happen, but between BangShift Mid-West and the Front Range there is still plenty to see and do. With the Angry Grandpa Chrysler 300C pressed into long-distance duty and my wife in the passenger seat, we made our way out west. 2,317 miles and four days later, we were home and ready for a good rest in our own bed. These are some of the random finds we took in along the way, so click through and enjoy!
Right off the bad we were seeing plenty of beautiful rides out and about, like this GTO on Interstate 64 in Indiana…
…and this evil Corvette near St. Louis. Blower, convertible, and paint that said “drive me!” instead of “show me!”
About 45 minutes past the St. Louis Metro we passed this street-legal sand rail. I should’ve built one of these when I lived in Arizona.
Once we got our hotel room in Topeka, we linked up with Don and hit up the Fairlawn Plaza car show. Gabrielle the Monkey genuinely liked Haley and gave her a hug. As for me? I got a simian finger covered in saliva stuck in my ear.
After the car show, Don suggested we meet up at a place called Blind Tiger, which is an awesome brewhouse/restaurant. Since he had to go pick up his wife, he suggested that we get an appetizer to munch on while we waited. We ordered cheese fries. I’ve never seen cheese fries come out looking like a full-size bundt cake. We didn’t even finish half, and we didn’t order dinner either.
“Home, home on the range….” I was lucky enough to get this semi-abandoned homestead near a rest area in western Kansas. I wasn’t about to try to scale the 8-ft barbed-wire fence for a closer shot, though.
Curly’s place in Calhan, Colorado
This beast of an older Kenworth was for sale.
I’m starting to appreciate these dealership tags…at least the metal ones that showed that the dealership actually gave enough of a damn to put some effort into them.
I didn’t see a figure listed, but it could be yours for the right price!
I shot this building a few years ago on one of my road trips, and back then it was decrepit, with a rusting Corvair under a tarp along the side.
It is now a tractor restoration and maintenance garage. Awesome.
…no sign of the Corvair, though.
On the way into Colorado Springs we noticed a huge amount of land just outside of Peyton that seemed filled with cars…
On our way back east we decided to drive down a dirt road and see if we could get in here to take some pictures.
Unfortunately, we were greeted with two signs that killed that thought: “Private Property: No Trespassing” and “By Appointment Only”.
There are acres upon acres of vehicles in this yard, and I saw a wide variety of iron in here…
You can bet that I’ll make an appointment the next time I’m out here.
For you old-timers here…when was the last time you saw one of these signs?
Somewhere in Kansas, this happened. Creepy…
An old White-Freightliner day cab. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d like to see more COE trucks.
The next few photos are from the Oil Patch Museum in Russell, Kansas. What isn’t appealing about giant equipment?
The museum is about a quarter-mile behind a gas station on the westbound side of I-70. We showed up about an hour past closing time.
But that didn’t stop us from enjoying the sheer scale of the exhibits.
I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but at certain angles this could be one badass trebuchet.
And if you couldn’t find a use for this lovely little device, you just aren’t trying hard enough.
Roadtrips FTW.Good spending sometime with you two.
I used to shop at that “huge amount of land just outside of Peyton that seemed filled with cars…” when I was stationed in C-Springs. Owner is a crotchety old guy that seemed to be liquidating his stuff slowly on Craigslist when I left last summer. Parted out a 69 Riviera partially in the early 2000’s.