[Chrysler300] 3 x 3 x 3

A quick summary -

3 days cruising west x 3 days in Alamogordo x 3 days cruising back east. John Begian and I cruised home without incident today - fantastic drive and wonderful Meet. Rain for the 1st seven out of our nine day trip. Heading back on Sunday, we hit the heaviest rains of the trip, with flooded streets in Roswell, and torrential rains with some flooding while running through Amarillo. On I-44 in Amarillo, a westbound truck threw up a 30' high waterfall - massive amount of water that came down directly on my 300 - amazing that it ran without a blip. Also hit areas of standing water at speed that I expected to kill the motor, but I guess the ram setup was engineered to run great through these adverse conditions! More black skies and pounding rains in Oklahoma - we pulled over for a time, to let the storms blow south. Finally, in late afternoon, the skies cleared and the roads dried. And yesterday and today were finally sunny. Some added Mother Road (Route 66) diversions eastbound - an artery-clogging lunch at Clanton's Cafe in Vinita, OK yesterday, followed by touring an old DX gas station in Afton, OK that doubled as an auto museum, featuring a '35 DeSoto Airflow 2-Door along with several early and late Packards, a Stude, and a few other cars. Today we cruised a section of 66 running north of Ft Leonard Wood, MO, including the Devil's Elbow..

A big THANKS to Bill and Marilyn Allen for putting on a fun Meet. Friday evening's picnic outing in White Sands National Monument (cleared skies with some puffy clouds) provided a surreal setting - spectacular moonscape-like photo ops; hiking on the sand dunes, and sliding down these dunes on round 'sleds.' Saturday's car show also was blessed with sunny skies and warm temps - until the show ended at 2:00, when the skies opened, again! The show offered a good cross-section of our 300s - 3 C-300s, 1 B, ! C, 1 D, 1 E, 3 Fs, 2 Gs, 1 J, 1 K, 1 L. Also present was a '61 Chrysler that's run 6 Mexican road races, Bill Allen's '56 Dodge #42 Petty recreation signed by Maurice and RIchard Petty, and several other Mopars. Some were driven and some were trailered in, but they all looked great. Bill and Marilyn also graciously opened their home to Meet attendees. Great visiting with the 125+ Clubs' member attendees.

Four Letter Cars competed for the Long Distance award - and the winner was Scott and Debbie Dejka and their stunning Mardi Gras red G coupe - driven from East Wenatchee, WA. Scott and Debbie beat out John Begian, Michael and Linda Burke, and me. As Mapquest tells us, Scott and Debbie, and John, each logged one-way mileage of over 1600 miles; Michael and LInda Burke over 1500 miles, and me just under 1400 miles. It was fun to see my odometer turn 28,000, 29,000, 30,000 and 31,000 miles on this cruise - total 3,200 miles - trouble-free, once Spanky Cox had my generator rebuilt. Current log for the F is 9729 miles driven this summer.

Congrats! to John. Not only did he drive his superb G convertible to/from the Meet, but he won Ladies' Choice and Best of Show, as well as placing 1st in our '60 - '62 class. And also Congrats! to Scott and Debbie for their red G coupe placing second. Another of my favorites was an all original Tango Red '55 300 - same family owned all these years. in Texas.

Won't forget this - Think I'll leave the splattered bugs on the windshield, and souvenir bugs on the radiator in place for awhile!

Noel Hastalis

Back home in Burr Ridge, IL

300F coupe