Here 'tis -- your first-hand report on what we discovered. The salt looks good and fast. It's hard and dry right off Land's End, gets a tad moist about a mile or so in towards the pits and stays kinda moist for at least a mile and then starts going back to dry. In the pits and registration and inspection and impound and the ERC fuel truck it's hard and dry.
There are more and bigger crunchies than we've seen in the past few years, but they're dragging out pretty well. The access road is as usual the bumpiest - and it's not bad. The crews were dragging while we were there, making the return road and the courses. The pits have been dragged (note I don't use the word "drug" to specify the state of having been dragged) and are pretty nice.
The start line for the long course is closer to Land's End than last year - maybe a mile, maybe not even that far. We didn't go exploring over to the start of courses #3 and #4, but I assume they're around and beyond the big dike that parallels the first two courses.
Pits are long, as usual, and have three entrances plus the open end near registration - again, as usual.
In other words, there's not much change since last time. And - the salt is GREAT! We're going to have a safe, fun, and FAST meet. See you on the salt - soon.
Oh, yeah - these were shot after we drove into the pit area from Land's End. Make your own judgements.
There's a shot of the muddy stuff, just west of Land's End - to show you where to look for tourists stuck later on during the event.
And there's even a happy-happy (we hope) sign made of little hunks of blacktop scraps on the salt. We've all seen these things along the interstate - but this is the first time in a long while that we've seen one right out on the salt. It's on the road to the line from the pits.
