From St. Charles to Lake Placid: Our Porsche Parade Journey
There was a different format for this year‘s Parade being held in Lake Placid, NY. Instead of using one large, central hotel as the home base, the accommodations were spread out over several smaller hotels throughout town. Lake Placid is a sleepy little town which hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, surrounded by six million acres of Adirondack Park. Scenic mountains, lakes valleys and cliffs stretching seemingly everywhere. Everyone loves to be outdoors with kayaks, bicyclists, campers and hikers, right? Most if not all the facilities used during the Olympics are still in place, so they used the central Olympic center as the hub for all things administrative, the Hospitality room, the Concours and Historical display, SIM racing, etc.
Knowing that, asking my wife to go to Lake Placid for the Porsche Parade would not be hard. But… the realization that it is a 17-hour drive away is a harder sell. So, to make it a little more bearable, we added a few extra days before and after the Parade to the itinerary, so it wouldn’t be as much of a marathon.
Leaving St. Charles first thing on Thursday, we stopped at Cuyahoga National Park in Ohio for two nights to enjoy the scenery. We hiked around and looked at the beautiful forest, waterfalls, ledges and marshes. Very rugged terrain and totally not expected.
Saturday, we continued driving and arrived at Lake Placid later in the day. Sunday was check-in, and because of a mini-Iron Man marathon in town, registration was held at a local high school. Porsches were showing up from everywhere, even Mike Holtzclaw from Alaska who comes every year in his mid 80s Carrera, with the front covered in blue painter’s tape. He’s always a big hit at the Parade because of the distance he travels. We chatted with him for a bit, and he said it took him ten days to drive from Alaska to the Parade. Talk about dedication!
Several vendors were already lined up in full force greeting us as we arrived with all kinds of information about their products, Expel, Cobb Tuning, LN Engineering, Pirelli, etc.
On Sunday afternoon, we went on a Revolution railway tour in North Creek, New York. We rode on a two-man pedal car that rode on the un-used passenger rail line for approximately 7 miles. We followed the river and enjoyed the beautiful Adirondack mountains. An unusual venue to say the least, and a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, Monday’s Concours started out wet. But it certainly didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm. The poor participants lined up and prepared their cars on the original outdoor speed skating oval from the 1932 Olympics in a light drizzle, which stopped exactly at 8am. There were over 150 cars in the Concours and Historic display venue, and it was an impressive display of Porsches from every era.
Steve Kemp, our Zone 10 rep, held an informal gathering at mid-day on the oval infield. Folks from all over Zone 10, which goes from Missouri/Kansas up and into Canada, met there at various times for a meet-and-greet. We met up with several folks from St. Louis and Kansas City as well as new faces from other regions.
Monday afternoon Sue and I volunteered at the Parade Store. We helped the other PCA members take advantage of all the souvenirs and apparel displayed on sale for this 70th PCA parade.
On Tuesday we drove out to the Mount Van Hoevenberg ski area for a private tour with the Porsche folks. This is where they have the bobsled, luge, skeleton and biathlon competition. Even though there’s no snow on the ground now, people are training there all year. The biathlon athletes train up and down the hills on paved paths with long roller blades to simulate skis. The other sliding teams train inside a huge refrigerated building that has an actual starting line and very steep downhill track. Apparently, the starting line is a big make-or-break situation. So, participants rehearse and train on starting with real sleds all year. I’ve never seen a three-story tall, seventy-meter-long freezer before, but they have one!
On the way back to town (to make the ice cream social) we stopped by the two Olympic ski jump towers. We took the elevator up 27 stories to the top of the ginormous ski jump. The site is fantastic and it is mind-boggling to look down from the top and see how steep it is.
On Wednesday we visited the Olympic Museum, where we learned about the history of the winter Olympics. Then we attended the Tech tactic seminar held in the old original skating rink. This is where they have several seminars back-to-back during the day with interesting speakers. We heard Frank Jung, Head of the Historic Archives at Porsche AG, discuss seventy-five years of Porsche Motorsports in America. Then long-distance traveling in a Cayenne EV by Abe Vyas from Porsche Cars North America. He drove an EV Cayenne up from Atlanta, and talked about his trip, charging stations, and the seamless trip he had. Porsche and their IT designers really have thought of everything.
Another interesting talk was by Nathan Merz from Columbia Valley Luxury Cars about your Porsche’s next life. Or really, what happens to your Porsche after you kick the bucket. His talk was about planning for the future and getting your affairs in order now, so you don’t leave a nightmare for your spouse to clean up.
And finally for the geeky side of things, we listened to Charles Navarro from LN Engineering talk about modern cylinder coating technology. It was fascinating for me, but I must admit Sue was getting glassy-eyed after a while!
The week would not be complete without me mentioning that our very own Allen Maddy, one of our Past Presidents from Columbia, took home First Place in his class for a beautiful etched glass and wood display he made. There was a great display of talent there with all the beautiful photography, paintings and hand-made crafts by all the members. Congratulations Allen!
SIM racing continues to be a big thing and has a lot of momentum. They had several SIM racing stations set up at the parade for use all week. Participants could sign up and try their hand at real-world driving experiences on several tracks in the US. The systems seem to be getting more sophisticated every year. And by the size of the crowds and length of sign-up sheets, they are extremely popular.
After the Parade, we drove to Niagara Falls and stayed there for two nights. It was beautiful and as impressive as you would expect it to be. We walked across one of the bridges to the Canadian side to see it from the front. It was much better viewing and more picturesque from the Canadian side. Then finally we stopped at Indiana Dunes National Park in Michigan City, Indiana. It is only six hours from St. Louis. This is a beautiful park with lots of dunes and interesting geography at the south end of Lake Michigan that I never knew existed before.
So, we did take in the 70th annual Porsche Parade. However, we are fortunate to be retired and added a little more time and interesting stops into our trip. It allowed us to make more of a vacation out of it. If you ever have a chance to go to a Parade, I highly recommend it.