American Road Trip 2008

[Erik Boattail]

Here's my report from Friday December 5th:
We left Gainsville, TX and headed for Denton, TX where this huge scrap yard is located, called CTC Auto Ranch.
This place is so big that I was worried about the question if my memory cards could handle such a large number of cars...
Here are a few photos from that day:
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[Erik Boattail]

[Erik Boattail]

After spending many hours at the CTC Auto Ranch, we discovered that we left the Riviera's lights on, maybe we were a wee bit over-excited when we saw al the cars in the yard when we arrived there.
So all the power from the battery was gone, but we got help from a CTC mechanic in his ''Jeep yard-vehicle'':

[Erik Boattail]

This post is typed in a little town in the San Diego, CA area.
Last Saturday we arrived in Austin to hand the Riviera over to Frank, and to attend the picnic he organised in this park in the Austin area.
More about that in a later post, but here are two photos from last Saturday:
We had to drive the Riviera through a river to reach the picnic place:

Here's Frank, the happy new owner of the Riviera, being very busy with his BBQ:

Thanks for the great meal, Frank !!!!

[Erik Boattail]

As promised in an earlier post, here are a few photos from the ''Styling Station'', a wonderful little shop with an amazing history, out on I-35, a few miles before Waco, TX.
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[Erik Boattail]

The owner of the store, this lovely lady from Canada named Rebecca, was very interested in our Road Trip story and also in the Riviera.
She told me that her first car was a 1969 Wildcat.
Here she is, posing together with the Riviera:

You should visit this place if you ever come down the I-35, it's located between exit #347 and #349, if you drive to the South you can't miss it on your right hand side.
Later tonight I will post a report about last Saturday and Sunday.

[Erik Boattail]

Photos from last Saturday, Austin area Buick Club picnic:
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[Erik Boattail]

[Erik Boattail]

Down-town Austin:
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Our new 1966 Buick Riviera:

And of course we had to go to San Antonio to visit the Alamo:

[Erik Boattail]

[Erik Boattail]

This post is coming to you from Las Vegas, Nevada:
After our visit to the Alamo, we decided to travel down the I-10 to reach Phoenix, Arizona on Monday morning.
At a truckstop we met this truckdriver from the Netherlands, who is now living in Texas since 1981.
Great guy named Paul, after all those years he still had his Amsterdam accent.

Paul was really feeling sorry that he couldn't show us his Peterbilt, for his current trip he was using a rental Peterbilt with small sleeper cab:
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[Erik Boattail]

After a few miles we reached Phoenix, Arizona in the early morning.
So it was TA Performance time for us !
Here are a few photos of the TA Performance manufacturing facility:

[Erik Boattail]

[Erik Boattail]

After our TA Performance visit, we went to another part of Phoenix, to visit Speedway Automotive.
The guy in the office told us that there wasn't a lot of all the Buick stuff left, they decided to quit the Buick parts business and only concentrate on the Reatta.

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[Erik Boattail]

Next port of call was Southern California:

Today (well, that's already yesterday when I'm typing this) we visited Rancho Riviera in Riverside, CA.
More about that later !!!