House Renovations continue; Tri-5 Nationals come to town; and visiting Fort Knox (Bowling Green, KY)

Still moochdocking at the daughter’s house in Bowling Green, KY.   It’s hard for me to keep the travel blog updated when we’re parked in one spot for so long.  Let me catch you up on our going-ons… first of all – renovations continue on the daughters’ house as you may recall from my last post.

The kitchen cabinets finally arrived that I installed with the help of a local handyman contractor that my daughter and her fiancé had previously arranged.

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Several days later the marble countertops were installed by another local business.  The installers returned the next day to tile the backsplash area.

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The kitchen is finally coming together.  We still have to do crown molding and baseboards, but otherwise it’s almost done.

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The kids are still contemplating new appliances, either black or stainless steel.  They still need to find a microwave that will mount in the space above the existing stove.

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In other areas of the house – Dylan found a good deal on a couple of new toilet bowls that he mounted himself.  Here he is (below) in the guest bathroom that we previously patched and painted.

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The old bathroom sink and vanity still needs to be replaced in the following picture.

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Here we tore out the old built-in vanity to make way for the new one:

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And here’s the new sink and vanity after we got it installed.  Not bad for a couple days work.  We still have to tackle the master bathroom vanity and sink next.

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Okay… that’s enough about updates on the house renovations.  It’s all definitely keeping me busy and Stilla enjoys cooking meals in a real kitchen instead of the Coach.  We’ve been eating pretty good lately 🙂

In other news – The Tri-Five Nationals are in town.  This is an annual event in Bowling Green and is touted as the largest gathering of 1955 thru 1957 Chevy’s in one place.  We (Stilla and I) attended a pre-show to the weekend activities in the downtown park on Wednesday evening:

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Stilla posing in front of the Bowling Green downtown park fountain at the Tr-Five Nationals “Fan-Fest” evening event.

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On Saturday, the Tri-Five Nationals were in full swing at the Beech Bend Race park located next to the Beech Bend Amusement Park.  This time we all (Stilla, Joleen, Dylan, and I) went for the whole day.  I was in 7th Heaven… “57 Chevy heaven” that is 🙂  Most of my readers know that I used to have a ’57 Chevy Bel-Air and a ’57 Chevy pickup that I drove to local car shows.  I snuck in this picture (below) of them parked in the garage back in Colorado Springs before we sold everything to go full-time RVing.

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Here’s some pics (below) we took at the Tri-Five Nationals (←link)… hope you enjoy as much as I did:

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(L to R) Stilla, Dylan, Joleen at Tri-Five Nationals in Beech Bend Raceway park, Bowling Green, KY.

Drag race cars:

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Lots of swap meet items for sale:

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And thousands of 55-57 Chevy’s to check out.

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Cool ’56 Chevy trailer (rear-view).

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Cool ’56 Chevy trailer (front-view).

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I’ve never seen so many ’57 Chevy’s in one place, especially ones that had the original color scheme (Colonial Cream/India Ivory) like mine had.  Here’s a two door Bel-Air convertible.

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And here’s a two door Bel-Air hardtop just like my old one.

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Acres of cars were on display:

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I even spotted this 4 door (below) that looks just like the one my Dad still has hidden away in his garage.

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Cool window tray display and drive-in movie speaker.  We used to have a similar window tray display that we put in place during car shows, I always thought it was a neat touch.

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Another cool trailer.  Good old American ingenuity at work 🙂

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And yet another two door Bel-Air hardtop in Colonial Cream/India Ivory colors.

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The drag races went on all day.  Way cool 🙂

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This (’57 Chevy) golf cart was cool.  Too bad I can’t fit anything else on the back of the Silverado 🙂

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Stilla posed for a color-coordinated photo with a ’55 Chevy.

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What a fun day!  It was a really cool event and I’m glad we happened to be here for this awesome annual gathering.

And in closing – Most recently, this past Monday – Stilla and I took a trip (about 70 miles) in the Silverado up to Fort Knox (←link).

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I did Basic Training and my initial Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) Training here back in 1981.  I also returned in 1989 for about 6 months to attend the NCO Academy for the Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC).  So it was a full day of driving around trying to identify landmarks and buildings in order to revisit the past.

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I found the barracks building where I stayed for BNCOC but all the old WWII-era buildings where I attended Basic Training have long since been torn down.  Here’s an example (below) located outside the Patton Museum.  A little trivia item;  the movie Stripes was filmed at Ft Knox just prior to my basic training and many of the old buildings I was very familiar with are depicted in the movie.  It’s always a cool trip down memory-lane when I get to watch that classic movie.

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Unfortunately, the Patton Museum was closed on the day we visited (Monday) but at least I had the opportunity to visit this really neat museum when I was here in ’89.  It would have been nice to see how much it has changed… oh well, maybe we’ll make another trip up here.

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And no visit to Fort Knox is complete without an obligatory pic of the Gold Depository (below).

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It was a fun day, (for me at least), touring all the old sites in and around Fort Knox.

Stay tuned…  We’re expecting our son William to visit on the 22nd.  He’s flying into Cincinnati from Germany with his girlfriend Jasmine for a ~3 week vacation.  We’ll drive to the airport there to pick him up.  Hopefully, we have all of the house renovations completed before they get here so we can run around and do some sight-seeing.