Hey Folks!
I met with the organizer of Mopar Nationals yesterday (Jim). He's a very cool guy and even owns a Viper car!
We talked about all the issues brought up here and a few others.
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Entering The Grounds: We will have a special meeting place about 1/2 mile from the gate B entrance. We will meet there at a specific time and get everyone lined up. Then it's a quick jaunt over to the gate (with a possible police escort!). The gate will only be open to us, and it will only be open for a very short period of time (approx. 20 minutes).
YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER IN ORDER TO USE THE GATE B ENTRANCE DURING OUR WINDOW OF TIME. The person working the gate will only be accepting pre-registered tickets.
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Water Run-off (Rain issues): I took some pics, and Jim explained to me the details regarding water run-off and where it takes place. The "Viper Pit" should not be in trouble with regard to any rain. The grass may get slick if it rains, but the field won't flood. There is a creek at the back of the Viper Pit area, but we would need some Noah-type storms to raise that to meet our feet.
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Open & Close: The venue opens at approx. 7AM and closes at approx. 8PM. If we start the BBQ stuff early enough on Sat. (4PM?) we should have plenty of time to make it to Heath or Brice Road for some rubber-melting fun.
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Tents: Jim and I talked about a few different options regarding the tents. Most tents are 20' wide, but he seems to remember that the tent vendor had a 30' wide tent one year. The 30' tent would mean that we could get (2) trucks in a row (butt-to-butt), or (2) trucks in a T-shape with extra 'roaming room' for the humans. We'll work on that as soon as I get more info about that 30-footer.
Tent placement in "The Viper Pit" will probably be similar to last year (U-shape with 3 tents; largest being the bottom of the 'u'). If we go with a 2nd tent, this may change to "4 in a row", with the 2 middle tents being very, very large. I'll post when we have more info on this.
Truck-width access in/out of the tent(s) is another thing I plan on talking to the tent vendor about. Jim said that they do have 'door frames' that can be set up for certain tents. He wasn't sure if the big tents had that option, but said it's something to check into. I will certainly do that. (I can hear BeGood saying "thank you!" from here....LOL). Moving those tent poles out of the way each time was a pain.
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When I showed Jim the printout of the latest "we're coming" list, he was really impressed. He understood that we will have a few last-minute cancellations and a few last-minute additions. He's been doing Mopar Nats for a long time and knows that happens every year.
I will start a separate thread for the Tent(s) once I talk with the vendor about the sizes available.