The morning started at the Opryland Hotel parking lot. We arrived at around 6:30 and waited for the final caravan into Bowling Green to begin. At least two parking lots were filled by the participants in Nashville, with a total of 2362 Corvettes.

Here's the lot we staged in before caravaning to the National Corvette Museum.

Here's the adjacent lot at the Opryland. Even more Corvettes came down from Louisville.

There were many beautiful sights on the caravan, like this 58 Corvette driven by an attractive redhead.

Several of the overpasses along the way had people on them filming and waving at us.

Corvettes as far as you can see behind us.

Corvettes as far as you can see in front of us as well. We caused a traffic jam over five miles long.

Here's a bodyless C5 Chevrolet uses for shows. I was surprised that the birdcage structure is fabricated from aluminum. More interesting than the whole upper dash and windshield assembly being aluminum, it bolts in, so on the assembly line the worker assembles all the dash with the structure upside down, then it's installed in the car. Man I wish they figured this out in 1961. I've spent far too much time on my back under the dash working on stuff.

The plant tour was quite interesting. The only thing I felt I missed was watching the powertrain backbone being assembled. We did get to see the whole drivetrain come down the line, and the corresponding Corvette frame and body come along above it and get mated. We did see the initial dyno run they do with the car. Pretty wild. With how they drive it on the dyno, these things are not babied from the get-go.

My oldest son, Jonathan says he's going to buy a Callaway C12 when he's older (ambitious goals for a ten year old). With all the tuners except LPE here, I took the opportunity to photograph the C12.

Here's the side profile of the C12.

Here's the C12 from the front.

Here's the Team ZR-1 Brick at the NCM. I hope all the teammates that are here get a chance to see it. I met Malcolm while I was waiting in line for the Corvette Plant tour.

The Museum didn't have any 61's on display, but did have this original ad for the car. This matches the composition of the caravan, with C4s and C5s well represented and everyone else neglected.

It did have a rotating cutaway of a 61 Corvette LT1 Engine - at least the same model that currently resides under the hood of my 61 Corvette.

The plant is kicking out many Corvettes in great colors. Take your pick off this trailer, but some of you may want the new colors.

Here's a truck loaded with the new Bowling Green and Millennium Yellow cars. Some of us refer to the latter color as DTY Corvettes.

There's a display of guest cars that covers the entire 47 model years sold.

Here's a picture of the 55, 56 and 57 Corvettes out of that display. A local PBS station was out filming the event, and I walked by as they were closing a shot next to the 61 Corvette in this display. I talked to them for a couple of minutes, and then they decided my cross country trip was an interesting piece, and they wanted to do an interview.

I got the Corvette from the field I parked in this morning. They shot most of my interview with me in the driver's seat.

Here's the backdrop they had for the shoot.

We got Jerry on Camera as well.

We closed with a bit of footage of the car driving around the grounds. One of them made the mistake of leaving his notepad on the ground next to the car, and got a nice Firestone SZ-50 autograph. They made me sign it as well after I return from the driving segment. I'm surprised I missed the pen.

Fuel Log