Greetings from Oakley, Kansas
And then Box Elder, South Dakota
And finally, Wadena, Minnesota
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Logan County Fairgrounds Dirt figure 8 Lifetime Track #2,729 Bandit Speedway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,730 Wadena County Fairgrounds Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,731 THE EVENT Editor’s note: O.K. we had a car crash! That didn’t slow us down too much. Carol and I made it to Kansas and then I soloed onto South Dakota and Minnesota before calling it a trip. 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 son J.J. on a racing/safari trip to South Africa). 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. 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 Friday/Monday, July 23-26, 2021. This is Part 2 of a two-part series. This Trackchaser Report covers the last part of a bigger trip that became a bigger trip at the last minute. I know. Complicated, right? For this trip, I established a schedule, nearly two weeks in duration, from Monday through Sunday of the following week. In 13 days, I planned to see racing at 12 tracks. One of those tracks was rained out. Of the remaining ten tracks that I did see I was the first trackchaser ever to visit eight of them! Carol would join me for part of the trip. Then I would run into a couple of buddies up in South Dakota who would come along to another track I was visiting. In total I would see racing in six states, Kansas, Minnesota (twice), Wisconsin, Kentucky, Illinois, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota and Minnesota…again. Quite a few Trackchasing Tourist Attractions were thrown into this trip for variety as well. If you would like to read about Part 1 of this trip here’s the link: Part 1 of the second half of this trip! FRIDAY Carol and I woke up this morning to a hotel breakfast of biscuits and gravy in McCook, Nebraska. Tonight, we would be trackchasing over in Oakley, Kansas. Ever heard of any of these places? Today was a warm 100° day at this afternoon’s destination of Colby, Kansas. What was bringing us to Colby? The Prairie Museum! I had never heard of this museum. Nevertheless, it never ceases to amaze me what you can learn when you Google things to do in some remote location. The Prairie Museum was highly rated. I would say we were most impressed with the Prairie Museum of Art and History. They had some fantastic displays of “old things”. The museum had a huge display of glass artifacts and lots of antique toys. Just seeing this part of the museum was well worth it but there was more to come. Do NOT miss my photo album of this visit. When we were finished seeing all of the indoor offerings, we went outside in the stifling but dry heat. The first structure we saw was a residential home built back in 1903. It was interesting to be able to go inside this home by ourselves and get close-up photographs of what life was like more than 100 years ago. It reminded me of visiting my Aunt Jen’s home down in Charleston, Illinois when I was a boy. Next up was a visit to the Nicol one-room schoolhouse. This place was built in 1887 and closed in 1931 due to a lack of students! In 1987 the building was donated and moved to its current museum site location. Please. Don’t miss the photo album. The hits just kept coming. Next up was a sod house. Although the sod house was built somewhat recently in 1984 it followed the construction techniques that were used to build this kind of dwelling from more than a century ago. Of course, we couldn’t miss the Lone Star church building. Construction of the wooden church began in 1915. As I’m sure you can understand with all of this being in Kansas, a tornado destroyed the church before its completion! The church was rebuilt by the fall. The final building was a huge barn. The second floor of this barn had been converted into a very large space that could be used for all kinds of local get-togethers. This barn was impressive. If you’re ever out in the middle of nowhere and get a chance to go to the Prairie Museum I would highly recommend it. We finished off our day with an excellent steak dinner at the City Limits bar and Grill in Colby. We would spend the evening trackchasing in Oakley, Kansas. I don’t know if the legendary Annie Oakley came from Oakley, Kansas but there is an Annie Oakley Motel in town. Tonight, we were going to attend a demolition derby at the Logan County Fairgrounds in Oakley. You already know that demolition derby events do not count in the world of trackchasing. However, there was a special event that attracted us to the fairgrounds this evening. There was going to be one figure 8 Race. The event attracted a huge crowd. Everyone was there for the demolition derby. We might have been the only fans in the stands who showed up to see figure 8 Racing. Normally at an event that offers both figure 8 racing and demolition derby the figure 8 race is held first. That’s just the way they do things. Tonight, when we arrived there were no tractor tires in the middle of the demolition derby ring to begin the program with. Those tires would be the figure 8 track markers. I was concerned. I knew this was a demolition derby focused evening of entertainment. Had they canceled figure 8 Racing? Oh no! Carol and I sat through a few demolition derby heats with no mention from the announcer about figure 8 racing. I was doubly concerned at this point. However, true to their word, in the middle of the program they came out and ran a single figure 8 Race. We had been talking to some demo derby fans seated next to us. They were pretty amazed that we came from California to such a faraway location as Oakley, Kansas to see one figure 8 heat race. Sometimes I find that amazing as well. From the fairgrounds, we headed back to Denver, Colorado. Carol would be flying home in the morning. I would continue my trackchasing trip and be flying tomorrow as well. After the races when we were driving in Bennet, Colorado just 24 miles from the Denver airport we had a problem. It was midnight. We were motoring down the highway at 75 mph. I think I was a little bit tired. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t paying full attention to what was ahead on the road. That was problematic. From what I can remember I looked up and saw what looked like a huge dog, maybe a collie, about 30 feet in front of the car. At 75 mph it doesn’t take long to cover 30 feet. Whack! That collie or whatever it was could be heard making its way underneath the front bumper and underneath the entire frame of the car and out the back end. That was gonna leave a mark! Since we are so close to our hotel in Denver, I thought potentially we could just keep on driving. The car steered fine. We continued on for four or five miles until the car’s temperature gauge started going wacko. Our rental car was overheating. We would have to stop. I certainly didn’t want to pull over to the side of Interstate 70 at midnight to check things out. There had to be a better option. We made it another ten miles to the Watkins, Colorado exit, on I-70. There was a truck stop there. However, at this hour of the morning at what was nearly 1 a.m. the truck stop was closed. There were a few truckers parked so they could sleep here overnight. Somewhat shockingly the indoor bathrooms at the truck stop were open despite the overall facility being closed. For the next couple of hours, I called National and explained our situation. We had run over something and our car was not drivable I told them. I’ve actually had this happen a few times. It’s a long process. It’s a confusing process for me and for National Car Rental. Everybody does the best they can but they just don’t understand what “the other guy” is doing as in tow truck drivers, Uber drivers and different people within the National Car Rental administrative system. This was a mess. This was time-consuming. It was getting later and later by the minute…like it does every night! One of the people at National was trying to get an Uber driver or a taxi driver to come out to Watkins to pick us up. You can imagine with it being 1 a.m. and our being 12 miles from the Denver airport this is not an easy option to implement. By the way, the Denver airport is out in the middle of nowhere as well! I was also calling Uber. National had agreed to pick up the car and tow it to one of their locations tomorrow morning. In the meantime, they were doing the best they could to get us some transportation to our hotel. Finally, after we sat in the car for a couple of hours an Uber driver that I had called showed up. Thank goodness. We grabbed all of our belongings out of the rental car since we would never see this car again. Off we went toward our hotel. We were down the road about five miles when I suddenly exclaimed, “I forgot something!”. Without missing a beat, the Uber driver made a U-turn at the next earliest option. We went back to grab a few things that I had forgotten in the melee. It was a wild night. We pulled into the hotel at past 2 a.m. Luckily, our first flight tomorrow wasn’t until 1:30 p.m. SATURDAY We woke up at the Hyatt Place in Denver, Colorado at the airport. The hotel had a shuttle bus that would take Carol to the airport for her return flight to Los Angeles. I hopped on the same shuttle bus to ride over to the Denver airport. I wasn’t flying back to Los Angeles. I would be flying from Denver to Rapid City South Dakota. In Rapid City, I would pick up a rental car that I would drop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Are you now in 100% agreement with me that logistical strategies are one of the most important things in the hobby in trackchasing? In the meantime, I got a call from the tow truck driver asking me where I wanted him to return our broken rental car from last night. That seemed like a strange request. I told him that it really wasn’t up to me. This was now between National Car Rental and him. I was out of the picture. I am required to buy insurance to cover stuff like this. Whatever happens, I don’t pay…except for the five dollars per day insurance fee. Again, I have no choice about this and from time to time I benefit as I did on this trip. With Carol safely on her way to Southern California, I hopped on my flight to Rapid City South Dakota. I would be trackchasing this evening at the Bandit Speedway in Box Elder, South Dakota. The Bandit Speedway opened up a couple of years ago. Their schedule has been sort of tentative as befits a new rural race track. The track doesn’t have lights. They don’t need ’em. During the summer in South Dakota, it stays light for a long time. The track is a work in progress which befits a brand new track especially those in the more rural parts of the country. I didn’t want to wait too long to make my trip to Box Elder. The track promoter had a history of opening a new track and closing it quickly as he did back in 2010. Back then I went to the Butte County Raceway in Belle Fourche, South Dakota to see racing at his track. That was the first…and the only time they ever raced at that track! I had an afternoon to kill in Rapid City. I stopped at a local movie theater and watched the movie Black Widow. This was a Marvel Studios production and not really my favorite movie genre. Anyway, it took up a couple of hours in the afternoon and that worked out OK. My visit to the Bandit Speedway was going to be special on a few different levels. First, I was going to be able to meet up with Jim Holland and Doug Napier. Both of these South Dakota residents have helped me along in my trackchasing efforts in their state. Jim has done a couple of interviews with me when he was a sportswriter for the Rapid City Journal. Doug has helped me with South Dakota race dates most notably the indoor show at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center back in 2013 in Rapid City. Tonight, I will get a chance to see both of these guys for the first time in a few years. The Bandit Speedway is a growing track. As you might imagine car counts were on the skinny side. Nevertheless, a nice crowd showed up to watch racing on a blue sky evening in late July. The racing featured wingless sprint cars, modified stocks and some other stock car classes. Fans brought their lawn chairs and sat on a terraced dirt hillside. A highlight of the evening was getting a chance to talk with Kevin Phillips the Bandit Speedway track announcer. I’m told that Kevin is from North Dakota but that South Dakotans have accepted him as their own. He was an enthusiastic guy and did a great job managing our interview. You’ll be able to hear that interview on my YouTube video from the Bandit Speedway. Here’s a link just to make it a little bit easier to find. XXX Another nice thing about my trip to Box Elder for this evening was this now puts me in sole possession of the #1 trackchasing ranking in the state of South Dakota. I hold a #1 ranking, tied in a couple of states, in twenty-six of our 50 American states. I’ll take that. I also hold a number two or three ranking in an additional eleven states. When the races were finished, Doug and Jim decided to take a tour of the pits. I would like to have done. But I needed to drive overnight tonight to Wadena, Minnesota. With Wadena racing at 1 p.m. tomorrow and with Wadena being 553 miles to the east of Rapid City…I needed to get going. SUNDAY I have driven overnight from one location to another many times in my trackchasing career. I don’t mind it at all. Normally I would use a bottle of 5-Hour energy drink to make things just a little bit easier. This morning at about 4:30 a.m. I pulled into a Watertown, South Dakota convenience store. There I met the female cashier who was sporting a bright pink top with even brighter blue and white hair. I asked if I could take a picture of her hair. She was proud of it. Don’t miss that photo it’s a classic. Yes, I encounter a lot of interesting people and have the most interesting experiences…this one at 4:30 in the morning after driving hundreds of miles. These experiences only come with the hobby of trackchasing! By now I was dining on mini glazed donuts and a bottle of Gatorade Zero. It was about this time that I came across Nyberg Park in Vining, Minnesota. I hadn’t planned on stopping here but I’m glad I did. They had some of the coolest sculptures you’re going to see anywhere. You don’t want to miss my photo album from the visit to Nyberg Park. Wadena, Minnesota is located along one of the major north-south routes in the North Star State. I have passed by the Wadena fairgrounds many times going to Minnesota ice racing locations in the winter. Today I would finally get a chance to stop at the Wadena County Fairgrounds to see some racing. They host several Enduro races during the summer. Today they had a nice field of stock cars racing on a 3/8-mile flat dirt track. I grabbed a seat about midway up in the covered grandstand to shade myself from the hot summer sun. I never like to take a lot of time telling you about what the racing was like when I can make a short video for you to see for yourself. After the races, I stopped at the Little Fiesta Mexican restaurant in Little Falls, Minnesota. They served one of the biggest and most delicious mango margaritas I’ve ever had. It rivaled the best I’ve ever had in Torrington, Wyoming. I think I could’ve sat there all day just eating fajitas and drinking mango margaritas but the life of a trackchaser never really ends. I had to keep moving. Tomorrow morning, I would be returning home. MONDAY I woke up this morning at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Minneapolis. I’ve stayed there many times during the midst of a harsh Minnesota winter and the heat of the equally harsh at times summers. I grabbed a jet airplane that would take me from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. I was flying on Sun Country Airlines. For whatever reason Sun Country despite being a domestic airline lands their planes at LAX into the international terminal. The international terminal at LAX is beautiful. It’s the first stage of the massive remodeling of LAX which is going to take six or seven years. This had been a good trip. I had been on the road for 13 days when I was initially only planning to be out for five days. I had seen quite a few Trackchasing Tourist Attractions that I detailed in these messages. I had seen racing at 10 new tracks in the past 11 days. What made that so interesting is that eight of those 10 tracks that I saw on the strip were tracks that had never ever been seen by any other trackchaser in the history of trackchasing. Is that noteworthy? As you may know the very first reported trackchasing track was seen in 1928 (above New York City in 1928) nearly 100 years ago. Despite that, nobody had ever been to eight of the ten tracks I saw on this trip. I find that particularly amazing. I landed back home on a Monday. I would be home for all of about 36 hours. Then I will grab a flight to Kansas City to begin my next trip. I’ve been doing this for well over 20 years. Almost every week every year. I am now starting to run out of new racetracks to see for the very first time. As noted, I have to resort to becoming the first trackchaser ever to see a track in order to find new tracks. Virtually every track that a trackchaser sees in today’s world has already had me as an occupant. I hope you read this far. I thank you for taking the time to show an interest in what I’ve been doing with my hobby of trackchasing.
Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,731 tracks. Kansas The Jayhawk State This evening I saw racing at my 47th-lifetime track in the Jayhawk, yes, the Jayhawk State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Kansas. Kansas ranks #17, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Kansas state trackchasing list. I have made 37 separate trips to Kansas to see these tracks. South Dakota The Mount Rushmore State This evening I saw racing at my 21st-lifetime track in the Mount Rushmore, yes, the Mount Rushmore State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in South Dakota. South Dakota ranks #31, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time South Dakota state trackchasing list. I have made 17 separate trips to Kansas to see these tracks. Minnesota The North Star State This evening I saw racing at my 112th-lifetime track in the North Star, yes, the North Star State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Minnesota. Minnesota ranks #5, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Minnesota state trackchasing list. I have made 79 separate trips to Minnesota 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 Kansas sayings: First of The Rectangle States South Dakota sayings: It’s noon; time for dinner! Wait, afternoon? Don’t you eat dinner in the evening? Nope, in South Dakota lunch is dinner and dinner is supper. Don’t worry, you’ll catch on soon. Minnesota sayings: Crapola Meaning: 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 855 tracks of my lifetime total. Why mention this? Because it’s true? 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. We came to Kansas for just one figure 8 race! Not many people trackchase in South Dakota. I do. Low-dollar Minnesota enduro racing…on a muddy track 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. Each trip includes a lot of photos of the “trip” and not just the racing. From one U.S. senator, “I think if I wanted to see what this adventure was like and didn’t have all that much time, I would just look at the photo album.” All photo albums are fully captioned. Touring and trackchasing all over rural western Kansas
A fun trackchasing night in South Dakota meeting lots of nice people
South Dakota to Minnesota and all the way back home!