Greetings from first Norfolk, Nebraska
and then Jay, Oklahoma
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Off Road Speedway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,701 MidAmerica Outdoors Dirt road course Lifetime Track #2,702 THE EVENT Editor’s note: O.K., by a show of hands how many think their ideal adventure vacation includes sleeping overnight in their rental car? O.K. get those hands up! I travel this way so you don’t have to. How does that work? I tell you how I travel and then you get to decide if that’s a good idea for you. Fair enough? Now get out there and go somewhere. Covid is in the rearview mirror and getting smaller every day. I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with legendary Leonard Wood of the famous Wood Brothers Racing team). I live in San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Trackchasing for me is all about three things. First, I enjoy auto racing. Secondly, my hobby requires a good deal of overnight travel. When I venture out to see a race at a track I’ve never seen before I do not want my trip limited to racing only. The very last thing I want when I’m done trackchasing is to have memories of only racing. I want to take some time to see the local attractions of wherever I might be visiting. Those visits in many cases will provide more long-lasting memories than whatever I saw on the track. Finally, I want to create a logistical plan that allows me to accomplish the two points mentioned above without depleting my retirement account. That’s trackchasing for me. Hundreds of trackchasers have stopped for a moment to create their own personal trackchasing list. I think that is great. However, I will tell you that no one has ever taken trackchasing more seriously than I have. Do I have any data to back up that assertion? I do. To date, I have seen auto racing in 85 countries at more than 2,700 different tracks. Does that sound serious to you? I’ve been able to see the world doing this. If you’re interested in exactly what I’ve been able to experience all around the U.S. and the world I recommend you click on this link. Trackchasing Tourist Attractions After each and every event that I attend I post a YouTube video, a SmugMug photo album and a very detailed Trackchaser Report about the experience on my website at www.randylewis.org. My trackchasing contributions generate a good deal of interest in what I am doing. My YouTube channel (ranlay) has more than 1.3 million views. My website gets more than 20,000 views every month. Because I have seen racing in 85 countries at this point I am considered the World’s #1 Trackchaser. That’s good enough for me. Now I encourage you to drop down a few spaces and read about today’s trackchasing adventure. As you discover what went on at this track just think about the idea that I’ve done this more than 2,700 times. I don’t mind admitting I am addicted to the hobby of trackchasing. It’s just fun! If you’re interested in looking back and seeing where I’ve been the following link is for you. If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! FOREWORD Saturday/Sunday, May 29/30, 2021. Alaska was a “no-go” for this trip. Well… I had hoped to go trackchasing in Alaska this weekend. However, those guys get a lot of rain. It seems as if I’ve been trying to go to the Alaska Raceway Park in the Great Far North for a few years. Every time I have the opportunity the rain chances are too great to risk the trip. All over the eastern United States, the forecast for rain was heavy this weekend. I know it’s still springtime. But I can’t believe how much rain everyone is getting. Luckily after about March the rain ends in Southern California and doesn’t come back until November or December. Unfortunately, there are no trackchasing opportunities in my neck of the woods. This was the new plan. This weekend’s revised non-Alaska trackchasing trip will have me going to a permanent dirt oval track at Nebraska on Saturday night. On Sunday morning I’ll drive down to Oklahoma for a UTV race. Then on Monday night, I’ll be returning to my boyhood state of Illinois to see some racing on a permanent dirt oval that I had visited in 1994. I would classify this as a rather diverse trackchasing weekend. This new plan was to switch over to my very last permanent race track that I hadn’t seen in Nebraska. There was a minor problem with going to Nebraska this weekend. The flight that I wanted to get on was extremely tight. A couple of days ago when I listed there were 17 open seats. I was the second standby passenger on the list. As of this morning, there were eight open seats and I was number six. It was going to be tight. A busy racing Memorial Day weekend worldwide. This is Memorial Day weekend. On a worldwide basis, this might be the biggest weekend of the year for auto racing. First, there is the Monaco Grand Prix in, where else, Monaco. That is followed by the Indianapolis 500 and then the Charlotte 600 later in the day. I’m not really much interested in Monaco or Indianapolis. I know those who are. I’ll record the Charlotte 600 a.k.a. the World 600 and watch it when I return home from this trackchasing trip. Normally I would be making a new track visit somewhere across the United States on Friday night of Memorial Day weekend. However, as I have mentioned to you in the past, the number of new track opportunities for me has decreased dramatically. I didn’t have that many Friday night choices and of those that I could consider they were all having potential weather problems. I decided just to stay home and leave on this trip on Saturday morning. Some stuff is simple until it is complicated. My Saturday morning trackchasing transportation plan seemed simple until it became complicated. I didn’t have to leave our modest seaside cottage until the very comfortable time of 7 a.m. I was standing by for a flight from Los Angeles to Omaha. It wasn’t leaving until a little bit after 10 a.m. Almost all of my flight departures leave from the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). I have a standard time formula for these trips. I want to leave the house three hours before my flight is scheduled to depart. This is my “go-to” travel plan that I used for most trips. When there isn’t any traffic, I should be able to get from my house to the airport in about an hour. The driving distance is 65 miles. I also like to be in the airline terminal one hour before my flight. Additionally, it’s going to be a 20-minute walk from my parking garage to the terminal. This leaves me a “buffer” of about 40 minutes just in case there is traffic or I want to stop and grab something to eat quickly along the way. Although the actual driving mileage to the airport is only 65 miles, I might burn up 80-90 miles worth of electric car charge driving at higher speeds. If I don’t have any traffic, I often use that 40 minutes of “buffer time” at a supercharger near the airport. While the car supercharges I like to get in a mile or more of walking. I’m a big guy for multitasking. The perfect plan? On this Saturday morning, there was no traffic. This allowed me to supercharge for about a half-hour and do some power walking. Then I arrived perfectly on schedule at the airline terminal exactly one hour before my flight to Omaha was scheduled to depart. This part of the trip was going well…until it wasn’t. Dang! I wasn’t expecting this! When I showed up at LAX the American Airlines kiosk wouldn’t work. I only had an hour before my flight was ready to leave. The line of “real people” waiting to be served had to be 75 people long. There was no way I could stand in that line and still make my flight. To top it all off my flight was departing from the “remote” terminal at LAX. That meant I would have to ride a shuttle bus from the main terminal to the remote terminal. That can add another 15 minutes to the entire process. I was in trouble right off the bat on this trip. For a moment I feared I would not be getting on the flight to Omaha. The idea of the weekend! Then I came up with a trip-saving idea. I quickly listed for another flight on a different airline in a different terminal. LAX has eight different terminals. Three or four of those terminals have their own independent security checkpoints. That means in many cases a passenger has to leave security in one terminal in order to get into another terminal. Yes, it can be quite a hassle. My listing on the second airline, which I had no intention of using whatsoever, would allow me to clear security in one terminal. Then I could walk from there to the terminal where my flight was departing for Omaha. This solution got me around the problem with the kiosk not working in the terminal I really wanted to use. I thought this was a pretty creative solution to a last-minute problem! I travel nearly every week. I’ve been doing that for going on 50 years now. I have a few tricks of the trade that I know about that other people can’t really replicate. Today’s last-minute idea saved the trip! The 2 ½-hour plane ride from Los Angeles to Omaha was uneventful. I’ve gone to watching movies on these flights using the airline’s Wi-Fi capabilities. That makes the flying time go much faster. Over the years I’ve flown into the Omaha airport which is actually located in Iowa and not Nebraska many times. I used to have a lot of business travel in Omaha. Omaha has been a good midwestern-based airport for my trackchasing as well. I haven’t been in the Omaha airport since the pandemic began in March 2020. That’s why I didn’t recognize the new rental car set up for the airport. Today I simply followed the signs to the rental cars’ new location. No matter how much I plan “shit happens”. I soon discovered a bit of a problem. You may have been hearing on the radio or TV how expensive rental cars are getting. That’s because of the overall shortage of rental cars now that people are traveling as the pandemic wears down. Here’s the situation. How did the pandemic affect travel? When the pandemic began air travel and therefore people renting cars came to a screeching halt. As you know I didn’t really stop traveling all that much during the pandemic. As a matter of fact, I stayed overnight away from home some 83 nights during the first full year of the pandemic. That was despite even me staying at home during two periods of the Covid scare when things got a little “hot”. If there were 100 people flying before the pandemic there were five or fewer flying during the first few months of the pandemic. For me, that was great. There was nobody in the airports! This situation pretty much killed the rental car business. It was so severe that Hertz Rental Car went into bankruptcy. Rental car companies fell all over themselves selling their current fleet of cars. Now with just over 50% of Americans being fully vaccinated people are back to traveling. I heard today on one of my podcasts that 1.8 million travelers were screened by TSA in our nation’s airports on a single day last week. That was up from 250,000 exactly one year ago during the pandemic but still slightly down from 2.5 million on the same day two years ago. People are back at the airport! What is causing the rental car problem? Now that demand for travel is nearly back to normal the rental car companies have not been able to replenish their fleet of rental cars. That is happening for a couple of reasons. First, there is a “chip shortage” limiting the production of new cars. Secondly, demand has picked up so rapidly that the rental car companies haven’t been able to catch up. When I showed up at National Car Rental today there was a line of about a dozen people waiting for their cars. I had to get in the back of that line. That’s a new experience for me. Virtually every time I rent a car from National, I simply walk out into the lot and select my vehicle and drive away. Today National had absolutely zero cars in the quick pick-up section. They would bring up one car at a time. The person next in line would scarf that vehicle up. Right now, almost every rental car is not exactly a car, it’s an SUV. I was going to be driving more than 1,000 miles on this trip. I did not want a gas-guzzling SUV. It pays to make friends. I struck up a conversation with the couple just ahead of me. While we were talking, I reminded the National rep that I really wanted to get a sedan, not an SUV. Most of the time the folks from National are very receptive to these requests. This guy wasn’t very empathetic toward my hoped-for plan. Finally, a sedan did show up. The couple in front of me, whom I had now bonded with, told me that I can go ahead and grab this car. They would wait for an SUV, which was their preference. A BMW? Really? I was hoping for a Toyota Camry but that wasn’t happening today. The sedan that was available to me was a BMW 228I. I was willing to check it out but I wasn’t happy. If the couple who had offered me their place in line hadn’t done that I would have rejected this car. Honestly, I am not a big fan of BMWs. I rented one several months ago and was generally disappointed with it. However, I didn’t have much choice and took the car. I must admit this BMW and the one I rented a few months ago are on the lower end of the BMW product line. When I rent the Toyota Camry, I almost always get about 40 miles per gallon. I’ll let you know how well I do with the BMW. It should do better than the SUVs. Don and Millies! After the delay with the rental car, I had just enough time to stop at Don and Millies in Omaha. I’m a big fan of this seven-store or so fast-food chain. I’ve discovered them a few years ago. Whenever I get back to Omaha and have the time I’ll stop there. 99 cent frozen margaritas!! In addition to the normal fast-food menu, they offer $.99 frozen margaritas! I don’t know how much liquor is in each of these margaritas but I do know that you have to show your driver’s license to prove your age to get one even at my age! Today I went with the double chili cheese hot dog offering. I selected the $.40 upgrade from fries to the onion rings. It was all good. What’s in a name? Tonight’s race track was located two hours north of Omaha in Norfolk, Nebraska. I would be going to the Off Road Speedway. Off-road to me seems like it should be out of the desert someplace and not a black gumbo Nebraska quarter-mile dirt oval. I’m not sure what their thinking was when they picked this name. Nevertheless, Off Road is the last permanent race track that I have left to see in the Cornhusker State. I still have a couple of county fair figure 8 opportunities maybe another miscellaneous track or two but there’s not much left here. I paid $15 for my general admission ticket. There were no senior discounts. It seems that for the 2021 season $15 is the new “regular” price. Last year it was $12. Just a few years ago it was 10 bucks. The track had a good turnout of 500 fans or maybe just a little bit more. The weather was crisp, considering this was Memorial Day. By race time the temperature was in the low 60s. By the end of the night temps were down to about 55°. I had actually switched from shorts to long pants in the airport before heading to the track. I rarely do that. I love the vintage stock cars. Tonight, the track was offering up four classes of stock cars as well as a one-off appearance of the Midwest Stock Car Classic group (’58 Chevy above). I’m a big fan of these vintage racers and love to see them on the track. They remind me of what the racing looked like when I was a youngster. What is the right number of cars for a race? I’m thinking that a car count for an individual class of about 16 is just about right for a smaller dirt track. This allows for two heat races in the division with eight cars each. Then a 16-car field for the feature on a quarter-mile track works well. Actually, more tracks than not that I see do not get 16 racers in one division. Mind you I’m no longer seeing racing at the nation’s 500 best tracks. I did that decades ago. Oh yeah, I love the track’s electronic scoreboard and lap counter. I’m happy to report that the OffRoad race track started on time at 7 p.m. Good for them. Unfortunately, the PA system simply couldn’t be heard in most spots around the track. When there was absolutely no race car noise fans could hear the announcer but otherwise the audio system was almost nonexistent. That surprised me. Good vittles. From the looks of the track concessions menu from Scott’s Smoke Shop, they had some really good choices that you would normally not find at a racetrack. These include things like riblets and pulled port dinners. Since I had stopped at Don and Millies I wouldn’t be buying any food at the track tonight. Not only did the track start on time they ran one race after another with no delays. You’d be surprised how many tracks can’t pull that off. During the heat races of which there were about a dozen there were almost no yellow flags. In just about an hour all of the heat racing was done. I liked this. I had a long drive after tonight’s racing. The nickel toss! They did take a little bit longer intermission than I was hoping for. During the intermission they had a “nickel toss” for the kids. This attracted a huge crowd on the front-stretch where the adults watched kids picked nickels out of the dirt and mud. Yes, this is America, small town America. Don’t waste your money. Despite a decent sized crowd tonight’s 50-50 drawing only had $84 going to the winner. What did that tell me? It told me that Nebraskans are nice upstanding salt of the earth middle-America Americans. They didn’t want to waste their hard-earned money on a gambling exercise. Good for them. The feature racing was marred by a couple of unexpected delays. The Off Road racetrack looked like they were prepared for any on track issue that might come their way. They had two wreckers and a couple of special fire/rescue vehicles. That’s a lot more than most tracks have. Oh my! However, when two stock cars bumped into each other in turns one and two their bumpers became intertwined. Normally a collision like this is taken care of and the racing resumes in less than five minutes. Tonight, it took two wreckers and about 10 different safety personnel to separate the vehicles. The stoppage took 30 minutes. I don’t know what the problem was. I can’t recall a delay being this long for such a minor incident maybe ever. The three-hour rule. I have a “three-hour time limit” for most of my visits to most tracks. The key word is “most”. In general, unless it’s a really big event like a World of Outlaws sprint car race or a NASCAR race, I think three hours is plenty of time to be at a local racetrack. Two unexpected delays limited by participation tonight to seeing just three of the five feature events. Of course, my three-hour rule is not absolute. If my hotel is across the street from the racetrack, I will stay longer. If any of my most favorite divisions is still going to race that makes a difference. It’s just that a college basketball game is two hours long and a football game a bit more than three hours. There is no good reason to be at a racetrack for 5-6 hours in my opinion. During the modified feature there was a major wreck early on. It involved half the field. This one was going to take a long time to clean up. I didn’t feel like waiting. Where did these people live? When I looked out over the crowd of 500 people (Nebraska is a very red state!) or so I wondered about one thing. How far did they live from the track? Maybe 20-30 minutes? Maybe as much as an hour? They could afford to stay through these delays tonight. I couldn’t. I would be driving ALL night. Following tonight’s racing I needed to make an eight-hour overnight drive covering 499 miles to get me from Norfolk, Nebraska down to Jay, Oklahoma. Tomorrow morning’s racing was starting at the ungodly hour for a Sunday morning of 9 a.m. It’s the little stuff that can ruin your day. I hadn’t been on the road for more than five minutes when as I was traveling at about 50 miles an hour a large deer came waltzing across the road in front of me. He was just far enough ahead that a slight tap on the brakes saved both him and me. Knock on wood I haven’t had any major problems with deer during all of my trackchasing travels. That’s almost unbelievable. I had 11 to do 8. No, “11 to do 8” is not a prison sentence. If I wanted to show up at 9 a.m. in Oklahoma for the racing tomorrow I would have eleven hours to drive eight. Tomorrow morning’s schedule called for racing from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. I figured if I showed up at 11 a.m. that would give me 13 hours to drive eight hours. What would I do with my “extra” five hours of downtime? I would sleep in my car. Tonight, I wanted to drive one hour and then consume a bottle of 5-Hour energy drink. If I could drive five hours in total and then take a two- or three-hour nap and drive the remaining three hours I would be good to go. 5-Hour energy drink works really well for me. I probably need to take it about five times a year most notably when I making one of my famous overnight drives. Let’s be clear. Driving overnight was not my preference. I really didn’t want to drive all night. Who would? However, the track north of Omaha was the only new track that I could possibly get to on Saturday night that didn’t have a weather problem. Then the track down in Oklahoma was the only track that I could get to from Nebraska that was racing on Sunday. This might give you an indication of how few tracks remain for me to see. It’s only going to get worse. SUNDAY Last night I needed to drive 499 miles AFTER my Saturday night track visit in Norfolk, Nebraska to Sunday morning’s racing venue in Jay, Oklahoma. The drive was going to take me about eight hours. Racing was scheduled to begin in Oklahoma this morning at 9 a.m. With the help of a bottle of 5-Hour energy drink, I was able to knock out six hours of driving before I stopped to rest. I guess the product was overperforming! I found a Walmart parking lot somewhere in southern Missouri. That was at about 4 a.m. I pulled in and parked next to a couple of race car trailers. Did you know that Walmart allows campers to stay overnight in their parking lot? I set my alarm for three hours. I figured that would allow me to pull into the track in Oklahoma at about 10 a.m. or maybe a little bit later. That would be early enough to see what I wanted to see. However, I ended up waking up just two hours later in the daylight. I figured I might as well get going. I knocked out the last two hours in the drive and arrived at the Mid-American Outdoors off-road facility at 8:30 a.m. I might point out one thing that may or may not be obvious. I don’t sleep in my car (this time a BMW 228i) to save money. Saving money is an outcome of sleeping in my car. It’s just not the primary motivation. The primary motivation is seeing a race in Norfolk, Nebraska on Saturday evening and then seeing some racing in a place like Jay, Oklahoma early on Sunday morning. Remember, this is a collecting hobby. I do whatever is necessary to add to my collection. This is really no different than collecting baseball cards. Nevertheless, I must admit that as a young baseball card collector I never had to sleep overnight in my car. I didn’t even have a car when I was collecting baseball cards! I wasn’t sure what to expect with Mid-American Outdoors. I hadn’t really heard all that much about them. They were a relatively new operation. I would come to find out they might have the most extensive off-road racing plant that I’ve ever seen. After you take a look at the pictures and the video, you’ll be able to come to that judgment one way or another yourself. The young woman selling today’s pit passes was just a little bit over the top with regard to her rules and regulations. She told me that she didn’t really want to ask me but she needed to know my age. I told her. She looked up and smiled. “You qualify for 50% off for today’s admission price,” she said. That was certainly good news. You know that I’ve never had the big trackchasing budgets like many of my fellow competitors have had for decades. How much was I going to pay with 50% off? Maybe $5 or $10? She was soon telling me that I would need to pay $25 PLUS tax! Oh my. “Normal” people were being charged $50 for the day? I had never seen such a thing for UTV racing. This young woman wasn’t finished telling me the news that she expected me to benefit from. She recommended that I park my car in the satellite parking lot. She said it was “too crowded” where all of the UTVs were parked in the paddock area. O.K. let’s just stop here for one danged minute. Sometimes when people recommend the “generic” solution for you that’s not the best idea. I have discovered that it’s better in life to go with what you think is the best idea for you more so than what other people think is the best idea for you. There are some exceptions to this rule. Here’s the BIG exception. When someone knows a lot more about a particular subject than you do it’s usually good to take their advice. When a golf pro tells you to swing a certain way, even though you don’t think that’s a good idea, take the pro’s advice. You’ll be glad you did in the long run. The bottom line is that when someone who knows more about a subject than you do says to do it…it’s probably a good idea to follow their recommendation. Today’s parking recommendation was generally a bad idea for me but it did have some benefits. Parking in the satellite parking lot added a lot of walking distance to my adventure today. I guess that’s why they called it the “satellite” parking lot! However, the benefit to parking so far from the racing action was that it allowed me to get in my four miles of daily walking. Nevertheless, it would’ve been very easy for me to park in the paddock much closer to the starting grid. Mid-American Outdoors is a BIG place. I had to ask about four different people where the starting line was. I was getting answers directing me all over the property. When I challenged one guy on his directions, he admitted that he really had no idea where the starting grid was! Oh my, again. I’m going to guess that today’s race distance was about 2 miles long. That’s just a wild guess. I will say this. I’ve never seen a course with as much elevation change as I saw today. I wouldn’t want to drive a UTV racing machine down some of these hills at the slowest speed let alone at racing speeds. There were some extreme uphills and downhills that were about the equivalent of falling off a cliff. All of the racing today was for various classes of UTV racers. The 170cc class was for kids. The expert, amateur, women’s and vet’s classes were being conducted with much more powerful machines including those powered by 1,000cc engines. There were 13 separate classes racing today. The landscape for spectators, for which there were many, was essentially like walking on the side of a hill, a very steep hill. That’s not the easiest thing to do when you’re wearing size 14 Sketchers and you might only need size 13 Sketchers. I had to watch my footing. I know I say this from time to time and I truly do mean it. I would highly recommend you watch my YouTube video from the race today. You will see the extreme changes in elevation as well as several spectacular UTV crashes. No, you won’t want to miss it. Oops. I had to take a moment while tidying up this Trackchaser Report as wife Carol entered my office with my morning breakfast. She gets up each morning before 6 a.m. presumably to do chores. I sleep in later. Then when I wake up, I text her my breakfast request. A few minutes later breakfast is delivered on a tray to my office. We’ve been doing this since the day I retired and probably long before that. Please don’t throw any shade on this procedure. Carol loves doing this kind of thing…and I’m happy I can help her out. The folks at Mid-American Outdoors were taking the $50 they collected from every regular patron and investing the money in some impressive architecture. I think what they’re trying to do is to make this thing into a huge campground where the racers can stay on property for the entire weekend. They already have a large number of freestanding “cabins” available. They’re working on a huge swimming pool as well. Very impressive. Today I was seeing racing at my 42nd-lifetime track in the state of Oklahoma. I’ve come down here 32 times to do that. Long ago I passed legendary trackchaser, Ed Esser, for the #1 position in the Sooner State. I expect to be back to Oklahoma sooner rather than later…maybe even next weekend. With the racing wrapped up for me today at about 11 a.m. I had plenty of time to seek out some Trackchasing Tourist Attractions. I would find two excellent sightseeing trips that would make my trip this weekend even more special. The huge retail chain Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Founder Sam Walton opened his first store in Bentonville in 1950. Prior to that, he had owned a few Ben Franklin stores before getting into the discounting business. During my working career, I made several sales calls at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville. I used to drive over there from Dallas because I didn’t like flying on small computer planes into rural Arkansas. Over the years a lot of “Walmart money” has flowed into Northwest Arkansas. They now have a beautiful new airport, a baseball stadium and medical facilities. They’ve given quite a bit of support to the University of Arkansas in nearby Fayetteville as well. Very impressive. I figured there must be a “Walmart Museum” in Bentonville. It turns out there was. However, the museum’s website said their tours were sold out for today. Bummer. Nevertheless, I would drive over to Bentonville and park my car near the square and simply check things out. I found a good parking spot just off the square in downtown Bentonville and went about exploring. I couldn’t miss “Walton’s”. This is a replica of the store Sam Walton operated in downtown Bentonville. The store, a Ben Franklin franchise, opened in 1951 and generated a full $75,000 (yes, thousands) in first-year sales. The store is no longer open for business but it looks like your classic five and dime store that so many parts of the country had in their downtown areas back in the 50s. I did a little nosing around and found that I could sneak into the Walmart museum tour. O.K. I didn’t really “sneak in”. I just hung around until the young woman managing admissions couldn’t take it any longer and allowed me in. There’s no charge. The museum opens with a six-minute video narrated by several of Walmart’s past and present CEOs. Then I noticed Mr. Walton’s office recreation (above). Sam Walton died of cancer just after his 74th birthday. This proves that no matter how much money you might have future life is not guaranteed. I hope he didn’t wait until age 70 to take his social security or he would have left money on the table. I guess it paid off very well for the Walton’s to first open their Walmart stores and other businesses and then maintain ownership. Today three of Sam and Helen Walton’s children are the 10th, 11th and 12th wealthiest people in the United States. They are all in their early 70s. Each has a net worth of roughly $60 billion (with a B). Thirty-three-year-old Lukas Walton from Wyoming ranks #31st in the U.S. with $15 billion. Yep. The Walton’s has some bucks and they have shared it somewhat around Northwest Arkansas. I got a real kick out of the museum because I felt like I had a connection to Walmart after having called on them when they were a very small chain and no one even knew they were. Back in the day I never thought that Walmart was all that special. A friend of mine reminded me that Walmart was the only place that welcomed a customer when they walked through the door. Heck, I didn’t WANT to be welcomed when I came into the store. Later my sister would begin work at Walmart. She told me the Walmart “greeter” was there not so much to welcome people into the store but to make sure customers were not walking OUT of the store with stuff they didn’t pay for. I took a lot of pictures. You won’t want to miss them. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Bentonville. Tourists were everywhere. Everywhere I went things seemed so upscale. The scene was almost like out of a movie where the entire town is very prosperous and people are experiencing an idyllic life. This was in stark contrast to all of the small towns in America that I’ve been driving through for the past several months. I moved around town and discovered the 21c Museum Hotel. This is part of a series of art museums and boutique hotels with locations primarily in the southeast and Midwest. Displays of art were free to see on the first floor. I could have stayed overnight there for about $200/night. When my visit was just about wrapped up, I came across an ice cream place called the Sweet Dream Creamery. On such an idyllic day how could I pass up a stop there? I ordered a single scoop of salted caramel. This was some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had although their version of salted caramel might’ve been very similar to other people’s butter pecan. A stop in Bentonville, Arkansas was a very nice way to spend an afternoon. It was now getting to be late afternoon. Tonight, I would be staying at a Priceline-supplied Holiday Inn in Springfield, Missouri. I wasn’t planning on going to the races tonight. I was looking for something else to do. You should know that when I go on these trackchasing trips most evenings are devoted to the races. However, like today when the only racing I would see happened in the morning. I had a night on the road with nothing planned. That meant I could fill the evening with anything I wanted to do. I had a plan! I quickly learned that where I was staying tonight, Springfield, Missouri had a minor league baseball team. I’ve found that going to other forms of sport can be a fun thing to do when I’m traveling. I had a 50/50 chance that the Springfield Cardinals (St. Louis Cardinals) were playing at home. They weren’t! They were playing away at the Wichita Wind Surge (Minnesota Twins). Yes, minor league baseball teams have some unusual nicknames. You may have read that Major League Baseball led a reorganization of the minor leagues this past year. They eliminated some teams in a cost-saving measure. I thought that minor league baseball wasn’t going to be a part of my future tonight. It was! That’s when I discovered that the Northwest Arkansas Naturals (Kansas City Royals) were playing at home in nearby Arvest Park in Springdale, Arkansas. Arvest Park uses the naming rights of the Arvest Bank. Who owns the Arvest Bank? The Walton’s! Who’s the chairman of Arvest. Jim Walton. Tonight’s opponent was a team from San Antonio, the Missions (San Diego Padres). The San Antonio team dates all the way back to 1933 when they were affiliated with the old St. Louis Browns. There was just one problem with my attending the game tonight. The game was sold out. That’s usually not a problem for me and tonight it wasn’t, once again. I drove over to the ballpark arriving about two hours before game time. Why would I want to do that? I needed a little bit of a nap after getting only two hours of sleep in my rental car last night. Then just a few minutes before game time I grabbed my “Need One” sign went over to where people were entering the ballpark. I would imagine about five groups of people passed me before I could see someone was going to offer some help. This man had a party of four. I noticed him counting out several tickets. They looked to be extras. He came over to me to tell me I could have one of his tickets at no charge whatsoever. This ticket was part of a “suite” arrangement he had at the ballpark. He mentioned that I could use my ticket to get into the arena but not to get into the suite. That was fair enough. I thanked him very much. As I stood there ticket in hand, I noticed several fans and families come up to the ticket booth hoping to buy tickets to the game tonight. Each time they were told the game was sold out. I watched as they trudged back to their cars with their children in tears. If only they knew about the “sign”. Covid masks were not being required tonight. Employees were wearing masks but fans were not. I’m going to guess that about half of the stadium’s capacity is still blocked off because of Covid. I found a wonderful seat enjoyed a beer and a bag of peanuts and just sat back and watched some minor-league baseball. I saw something tonight that I could never remember having seen at any baseball game ever before. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t seen it just means that I can’t remember seeing it! Tonight, four batters, three of them in a row, out of five batters came to the plate and hit a home run off the same pitcher. Even after allowing four home runs, they still didn’t take this pitcher out of the game. Interesting. From there I need to drive a little bit more than two hours up to Springfield, Missouri. Tomorrow morning, I could sleep in relatively late. I was looking forward to that. Today had been a very full day especially since I was operating on just two hours of sleep and that sleep came from being in my car. Tomorrow I needed to be over in Macon, Illinois by 5 p.m. I was planning to join my sister Becky and my brother-in-law Bob for some stock car racing action on Memorial Day. I haven’t been to the Macon Speedway since 1994. Macon is a really tight 1/5-mile high-banked dirt bullring. Everyone raves about their racing. Little did I know that I was going to be in for a very exciting, some might call dangerous, situation. All of that was totally unexpected and would require a calmness to migrate through the situation. But…all of that is for the next story! Stay tuned. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,702 tracks. Nebraska The Cornhusker State This evening I saw racing at my 45th lifetime track in the Cornhusker, yes, the Cornhusker State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Nebraska. Nebraska ranks #17, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Nebraska state trackchasing list. I have made 32 separate trips to Nebraska to see these tracks. Oklahoma The Sooner State This morning I saw racing at my 42nd-lifetime track in the Sooner, yes, the Sooner State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Oklahoma. Oklahoma ranks #19, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Oklahoma state trackchasing list. I have made 31 separate trips to Oklahoma to see these tracks. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Nebraska sayings: The speed limit is 75 but you can drive 90! Oklahoma sayings: We have been Outrunning Twisters since 1889 JUST THE FACTS LIFETIME TRACKCHASER COMPARISONS The three most important trackchasing comparisons to me are: Total lifetime tracks seen Total “trackchasing countries” seen Lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Total Lifetime Tracks There are no trackchasers currently within 800 tracks of my lifetime total. That’s a fact, Jack. Total Trackchasing Countries My nearest trackchasing competitor, a native of Belgium, has seen racing in more than 30 fewer countries compared to my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. Stock car racing, including vintage stock cars, from Nebraska!
Wild and crazy UTV off-road racing way down in Jay, Oklahoma See it in pictures! Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. You can view the album slide by slide or click on the “slide show” icon for a self-guided tour of today’s trackchasing adventure. The trip to the Midwest including a visit to Don and Millies. 
