(Words and photos by Doug Gregory) –No I didn’t get to go and I have never been though it’s on the bucket list. My car is still down and I have very little vacation time thanks to health issues. That said, I knew the tour was coming through and though I work 30 minutes from I-75 I knew it might be possible for me to drive over and watch the parade for a while.
What happened was I went past I-75 to home and grab my camera bag and my youngest son to observe from the North-bound rest area outside Georgetown, KY. We arrived on site about 1300hrs (that’s 1:00PM-ish) and I started shooting right away.
I must issue an apology. If you passed me during this time and you do not see your vehicle it wasn’t because I snubbed anything. I threw out my standard operating procedure of only shooting what I like and honestly tried to catch every vehicle that passed. I failed. Maybe next time.
I can tell you this about shooting groups of cars passing by on the Interstate – it’s a lot harder than shooting cars going 200mph at the Ohio Mile. Trying to frame, track, click and move to the next target in rapid succession is exhausting. In the 90 minutes we were out there (including a pause for a potty break) I took over 500 photos for an average of just under 1 shot every 10 seconds. You know with time between clusters and individual cars the rate was actually a lot higher.
The other challenge is trying to get the shutter speed just right to provide some movement while still being clear – all as I am moving the lens left to right and back again quickly. Most of the time I ended up raising my shutter speed to eliminate the blur I was causing. Later as some little clouds drifted by it made capturing everything go from difficult to capturing maybe 75% decent shots. In the end about 450 of the images made the cut then removing redundant photos resulted in what we’ll offer you here.
The first two groups will be mostly late-model stuff. The deal with these is you don’t know how many (besides the obvious Power Tour decal) are on the tour, how many are relatively local and just following along, and how many are actually commuting. Most of these are vehicles we might see any given day on the roadways so…if I saw a later-model performance-oriented or unique vehicle I tried to get a photo of it.
I will say this about the participants – most of them honked and/or waved to the small gathering of onlookers on the lawn at the rest area. Some gawking at the cars had the foresight to bring chairs and refreshments. I failed on that one too.
There were a lot more CTS-Vs, G8s, and Chevrolet SSs passing by than you’ll see here. Many were nearly running nose to tail and I’m just not that good. A pair were part of a group that were not carefully observing the posted speed limit and I literally only got a shot of two cars from that gaggle.
In this gallery you’ll see a Marauder, Lightning, a SS with Holden badges, and even a pace car. Following collections will also have images from the rest area as many stopped to take a break with some opening the hoods to let things cool off a little.
Stay tuned for more from the side of the road.
