I’ve been waiting for a year to drive to Dubuque, IA in January. Yes, I am in fact a lunatic. You see, last year I was ready to make the 18 hour round trip up to Dubuque for the 1st annual Retro Rewind. As fate would have it, going to the show wasn’t in the cards for me. I hit a deer about a week before the show, taking my daily driver out of commission. So this year I was excited to make the trip up for the 2nd Annual Retro Rewind.
I turned the coverage of this show into a photo book, have a look, buy a copy or 12!
I’ve heard it for at least 5 years, “The Des Moines Goodguys is the best GG show that there is, you HAVE to go!” Finally I did. Let’s face it, the GG shows held at racetracks all kind of run into each other. The ones at the Kansas Motor Speedway (2012 coverage here, the show has been killed so that’s the latest coverage) and the ones I’ve attended at the Texas Motor Speedway (2014 coverage here) really are all the same in my memories. Lots of cars, lots of people, but no real atmosphere. So you get to drive your car around the track, okay that part is cool, but other than that the cars are basically just parked as if they are in a parking lot. As a spectator and especially as a photographer, that’s boring.
So this year it was time to finally make the trip up to Des Moines to see if this party still is the best GG party around. Of course due to some poor planning on my part the 6 hour trip northeast started with a 90 minute drive south. It’s a long story, but the short version is we had a long day. First we headed south to Park City, KS to see a small show there, one that we never even got into because traffic was backed up and we didn’t feel like making the day even longer by waiting in line to get in. Along the way we saw a Historical Marker that I’ve driven by for decades and never stopped to look at. It marks the crossing of the Chisholm and Santa Fe Trails. Near here there are a couple of areas where you can still faintly make out where the Santa Fe Trail went thanks to an indention in the ground from the wagon wheels. From there we went east to pick up some newly silk screened coozies from B. Scott Studios and hopped on I-35 towards Des Moines. We pulled onto the turnpike and set the cruise. After some sight seeing stops at the birthplace of Jesse James outside of Kearney, MO, an Amish “Welcome To Iowa” store just across the border we saw the sign for the Covered Bridges of Madison County. Yup the ones from the movie. I’ve never seen the movie, but it seemed a worthy departure from the interstate. Just off of I-35 is St. Charles, IA and one of the bridges. We stopped, read the signs, took a couple of photos and got word that some friends were going to meet for dinner at the Iowa Beef Steakhouse. It had already been suggested that we head there so we changed the GPS destination and got our taste buds ready.
The company was fantastic, the car crowd was filling the joint and the steak was phenomenal. It was pricey for our budget but not overpriced for the experience. With nothing really planned for the evening we settled into our hotel room and tried to catch some shut eye for Saturday. We were warned that at noon on Friday the window placards were already numbering at over 3200 (I’m not sure if they start at 1 and are sequential or not), so we needed to get there early to see all of the rides. Too bad for us a state sized thunderstorm moved into Des Moines before sunup and didn’t clear out until about 10am.
The first weekend of May is a busy one in the world of Midwest hot rods & kustoms. In addition to the Stray Kat 500 in Dewey, OK is the Vintage Torque Fest held in Dubuque, IA. I was lucky enough to attend the first two Vintage Torque Fests and man oh man did I have a blast.
traditional hot rod & kustom car show, other kinds of cars are welcomed but must park in their own areas, the main show area will be pre-65 hot rods & kustoms, no billet, no digital, for a full listing of the requirements click here.
One of my favorite notes on that page is “Stuffed animals, cry baby dolls, rubber rats, fake food drive in trays, skeletons in passenger seats are not for Vintage Torque Fest.”
Music to include: The Afterdarks The Alder Kings Captain Stab Tuggo Concrete Rivals Death By Rodeo Delilah DeWylde & The Lost Boys The Heroine Hot Rod Hucksters Krank Daddies LÁssassins Labretta Suede & Motel 6 Babe Miller and His 10-4′s Misery Jackals Muddy Udders Royal Rhytmaires Surf Zombies 3 On The Tree The Von Ehrics Dale Watson
Here are some of my photos from the first 2 shows:
2010
2011
So, if you can make it to the Vintage Torque Fest you’d better go, you’ll probably be sorry you missed it. If anyone has a time machine that I can borrow I would like to hit both shows that weekend.
