- Greetings from Lucerne Valley, California
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From the travels and adventures of the “World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Anderson Dry Lake
Dirt road course
Lifetime track #487
Greetings from Lucerne Valley, California, It’s about 122 miles from San Clemente to Lucerne Valley, California. Since off road races always start at 6 or 7 a.m. we decided to go over to the area on Friday night and stay in a hotel. Lucerne Valley is in the Mohave Desert. In the summer it’s a tad warm and today’s racing will take place in rising temperatures. In the middle of the day it will be in the low 100s. When you go to watch off road racing it’s a little like spectating at 2-3 mile road courses. The one noticeable exception is that rather than walking from one point to another you actually drive from one area of the course to another. Being in an air-conditioned car is a nice plus in late June in the Mohave Desert! The challenge for me is which car would I drive to the desert. Again, for those not initiated to the desert landscape there is a lot of sand, grit, dust and major rocks and potholes to navigate. I have two automobiles at my disposal. My personal car is a 1999 Lexus LS 400 and my company car is a 2000 Ford Taurus. For perspective we were at the Anderson Dry Lake racing facility for two hours before we saw ANY passenger cars at all. We saw only pickup trucks (most with four wheel drive), motorcycles and a few VW bugs set up for off roading. The last five miles from the highway to the lakebed were on a dirt road. I would have to be an absolute idiot to drive my Lexus out into these desert conditions. Now, on the other hand, Carol’s main transportation comes in the form of my company Taurus. Avid readers of these stories might remember Carol’s reaction to my driving the Taurus (it was intimated only) on the Buttonwillow road course. It was not a good reaction. It was not a positive reaction. The good thing about driving at Buttonwillow was that Carol was only hearing about the conditions via my cell phone call to her. Today at Lucerne Valley she was in the navigator seat to hear every twitch and twang as we went hinder and yon seeking the best desert viewing point. I heard lots of questions like, “What was that” and “Oh!” and “Uh!?” The very windy and gritty conditions did not escape her comment either. Normally under these circumstances when Carol is not with me I would be giving a sigh of relief that Carol did not see or hear whatever minor tragedy I was encountering. She was hear to see it all today and was, as always, willing to share her point of view. The major near catastrophe of the trip was when we got out near a group of spectators that seemed to be watching the action. There were probably 100 people in this area with 30-40 trucks parked at all sorts of angles. I was driving along trying to pick my way through the potholes and only looking about 10 feet ahead of the car. I started to make a turn onto an upcoming dirt path and heard a loud engine noise. I had just missed by about 3 seconds driving onto the course and getting run over by a flying off road dune buggy. It would be hard to make a wrong turn out of the parking lot at Daytona and end up coming face to face with Jeff Gordon in the third turn!! Nevertheless, we had a good time and Carol recorded her 97th track and I my 487th track. Disclaimer: It should be noted that nowhere in this report is the exact automobile choice identified as it is against company regulations to drive the company car off road. The race we saw was the KARTEK 400. There were 15 classes of racecars. The race paid $1,000 to win in each class with the overall winner getting $2,000. One circuit around the course was 58 miles. Most classes ran a distance of 6 laps with a few running just four laps. In off road racing you can tell a car’s class by the car number. Today’s show had 105 entries. Temps were in the 90s during the morning. It was dry, windy and very dusty. I’m sure the dust did my cameras no good. I had called the race organizers earlier in the week. They told me to go to area #4 to see some great action. This area allowed you to see cars coming from about a mile off. When they got near the crowd they had to go up a four foot incline that got virtually every car airborne. One guy came down on his front bumper and did a couple of end over end flips. This happened just a few feet from where we were standing. I’m really surprised more people in the crowd at off road races don’t get hurt. The cars come flying through an area fishtailing all over the place with people standing just one or two feet off the loosely designed course. It seems like it was Lemans many years ago where about 80 people were killed when a racecar went out of control. I believe that helped AAA get out of racing for good. If it has not happened already you’ll probably hear about off road racing fans getting wiped out one of these days. Off road racing like regular road racing is not my main cup of tea. But, occasionally it can give you some fun racing action. They certainly have a large number of cars and race pretty much all day. You also have the option of going all over the course without many restrictions. If you’ve never tried give it a chance. Weather: t-shirt and shorts at most 482 Savannah Speedway, Savannah, MO You might have remembrances from the off-road racing at the Anderson Dry Lake. If so, please feel free to share in the comments section below. If you have any photos from back in the day, send them to me at Ranlay@yahoo.com. I’ll try to include them here. TRAVEL/PEOPLE NEWS
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