It started Friday during a snowstorm in Rapid City, South Dakota. All the car trailers and vehicles had chunks of ice, making a mess in all of the big rooms at The Monument. This year they rented an additional Summit arena which seats 10,000. We were fortunate enough to be located in the Barrett arena, which is one of the central rooms of the complex. We were set up between the low riders and the McPherson Auction group. Our friends from the Hot Rod Institute were across the arena from us, they brought a 4wd Ford truck, a 2nd Chevy truck in the 1947-53 date range, a Chevy Nova, and a 64 Dodge truck with a hellcat engine. Walking from Barrett to Summit is a winding corridor. Just inside the Summit arena is a stage on the right and the rest of the floor was full of vendors and cars, including a whole row from the Studebaker club.
There is a whole room dedicated to motorcycles, another huge room dedicated to cars, and 2 arenas with even more cars. Between the rooms and in the hallways there are cars displayed. The room with motorcycles was carpeted. The motorcycles lined the walls, and there were displays throughout the room with trikes, custom paint jobs, bobbers, and a Vespa. Despite the bad weather, there were only 12 cars that didn’t make it. In total there were 274 judged vehicles and over 300 counting vendor booths.
The show was open from 5-9pm Friday. After the show closes at night, we can walk across the parking lot to the Holiday Inn Rapid City Downtown where we can have dinner and get to bed.
Saturday we roll out of bed, get breakfast, and head across the parking lot to open our booth for the show. The show ran from 9am to 9 pm on Saturday. During the show, Shannon was doing a live drawing of a vehicle and broadcasting it to a TV screen to entertain folks.
In the far corner of the Summit arena there were valve cover races. The valve covers were decorated in clever themes and had rollerblade or skateboard wheels to glide down a wooden ramp onto the smooth concrete floor of the arena.
At 4 o’clock, in Summit Arena, Shannon had the honor of presenting custom handbags to the flag girls from the Vintage Sturgis Dirt Drags.
Sunday the show runs from 9am to 3pm. We cleaned up in about 2 hours and had a nice dinner at the Holiday Inn Rapid City Downtown. We all got a good night’s sleep and headed home with clear roads on President’s day.
Check out the Facebook live video walk around the show.
Thank you to Counts Car Club for putting on this great show! We hope to attend again next year.
Stay tuned for more Car Show Blogs.
