I've Never Been to Speed Street

Every year when the Coca Cola 600 comes to Charlotte, the city puts on an event called Speed Street. For all my Northern friends - this involves NASCAR, the grocery store Food Lion, and country music. For all my Southern friends - you call this fun. I have heard many people at work talk about how great Speed Street is so I decided to give it a shot.

Let me preface this with the statement, I hate NASCAR. I don't get it. At all. Period. If you want to stand out in the hot sun with thousands of other people, ruining your ear drums, watching cars go round and round that end up in the same spot where they started - go for it. It's just not my thing. But I don't want to knock something too much until I've tried it, but "ya'll" might be waiting a long time to read that blog post!

Speed Street seemed like a safe way to dip my toes in the water of NASCAR. It's just basically a street festival with a racing theme. So after the Blevins crew (that's Mark, Anna, Madeline, and Audrey) picked up our glass fusing crafts and ate some dinner we were off! Our friends Sarah and Jesse let us park at their townhouse, which was within walking distance of the festival.

The first stop was the Kid Zone. There was a jumpy house and a few little games sponsored by Chex Mix and Hamburger Helper, but really nothing too exciting. It was just about sunset and a lot of the stands were shutting down. So we continued on to the main part of the festival, but again the majority of the booths were shutting down. Madeline did manage to con her parents into buying some flashy red ears which were quite awesome.

We went past the food stands and really didn't see much of anything else. The big stage was all lit up with some country music act, but it was still to early for a major party to be going on. All in all I think we were there maybe an hour. I don't think I will be heading back any time soon. I would rather have a county fair or a Woollybear Festival any day (for all my Ohio friends)!

The best part of the night was the walk back to Sara and Jesse's to pick up our car. The night was cooling down and we had the best time. Madeline was up on Mark's shoulders and she and Mike were having a tickle war. The sounds of her and the guys running around and having a great time just made me smile. It just goes to show no matter how many new things I try, all I need are good friends to have the time of my life.