No rain for 2 months then a big snow/rain storm followed by heavy wind… I had premonitions that a tree fell across one of the dirt roads. Visiting the most susceptible of the roads an hour before the start, showed my premonition was true. I scurried around and managed to get instructions to work around the downed tree, unfortunately I failed to remove a Left turn instructions causing a bunch of problems in that section. Two things worked in my favor, the helper of the very short non-dead end, and that I put two Turkey signs right after the steel bridge. Sorry if you got off there a bit, the rest of the rally worked well, no downed trees. Everyone seemed to recover from my last minute route change and 10 of the 11 entries finished at the checkpoint, the 11th car got to instruction 79, only 3 instructions from the end… so close to having everyone finish.
Thank you to everyone that braved the wind storm to come out for what was a great rally route. I had fun planning this one and was so proud to make it a fairly easy rally on some amazing roads. I had a lot of help to produce this rally first and foremost is a huge thanks to my co-chair, Barbara. She did a great job with instructions and always having a fresh view of the route. Don and Mark helped with a pre-run through what should have been the route… until the downed tree. Diane was so nice to do registration even though she wasn’t going to participate in the event. Ken, for talking me off the ledge with my premonition started to peek the day before the event, and for helping pickup signs the day after. And thanks also to GJ who helped at the start and checkpoint while Barbara stayed home to rest her broken foot.
As I said at the start, this rally marks the 74th Turkey Tour Rally. Pretty amazing history behind this event, what I didn’t know at the time is that Barbara and I have had the honor to have written 20 of the 74 Turkey Tours. Hoping that we can build back up the attendance a bit, 20 years ago, we started 38 cars… now it was 11 die hard rally fans. Interestingly, 10 of the people from back then are still active participants.
The Rally ended up being 63.6 miles and 37 signs were passed along the way. The original route, before the downed tree, had it at 68.2 miles and 40 signs. Of the 11 teams this year, the winners, Ellen and Pat managed to do the best in time, and tied for seeing the most signs, adding a good mileage estimate netted them a great score of 292 points. Ken and Dave finished second with 347 points, third place goes to Dani and Christine, who are the reigning rally trophy holders. Congratulations to everyone for navigating the storm carnage along the roadside.
We look forward to seeing everyone in the spring for the Bunny Run… once again it looks like we will should be able to plan at least 3 rallies next year. Hope to see you at them all…
Jesse and Barbara