The second US  AtomFest will be held on September 15th through the 17th. I’ll be driving there and back like I did for the previous event. I’ll be driving the shortest route there, which is on the interstate highways. But I’ll be taking the long way home, meandering through the South and sampling lots of BBQ and the best driving roads. I’ve posted a tentative calendar in PDF format here.

I’ll have the same Atom Across America hotline number as in previous years – 551-580-0100 – if you want to call in to see where I’ll be. This number will be active starting September 7th and through to October 1st. I’ll try to update the message each evening to say where I’ll be on the following day.

Here’s a group shot from the first AtomFest in 2007 (click on the picture for a full-size version):

You can find more information about AtomFest at http://www.atomfest.net

I’m about 400 miles from home tonight. I decided to splurge and stay in the mansion at Col Alto, which is now part of a Hampton Inn – but what a place:

The car has 15,850 miles on it.

Tonight I’m in Asheville, NC. I was up on the Blue Ridge Parkway today, but it got pretty chilly (there was ice on the rocks at the side of the road). I’ll probably take the Interstate back home and come back in the spring to finish up my Parkway drive. Here’s a picture of the Atom on the Parkway:

Here’s another good reason to always wear your helmet – up on the Parkway, I heard a “plonk” on the right side of my helmet. After I stopped, I found this critter stuck in the Atom’s intake snorkel:

Tonight I’m in Olive Branch, MS. I’m avoiding Tennessee due to the boycott arranged by Tail of the Dragon, so I’ll be moving through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia before heading up through North Carolina. Not much else to report.

Today I drove the Atom up to Eureka Springs, AR. I visited the Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway, a 2-mile scenic train route. They used to operate steam equipment, but the federal boiler inspectors have become a lot tougher due to an incident elsewhere, so they can only operate diesel equipment now. [I used to work on steam equipment in the summer when I was in High School, so I’m familiar with the enormous time and expense to keep it running.]

This is one of their steam locomotives, and is probably the closest to operable of all of them:

This is the diesel they use to pull the passenger car(s). While this is a very small operation, the engineer has an incredibly good hand with the throttle – the coupling and uncoupling was done perfectly:

Afterwards, I drove the Atom down the Pig Trail, which has some nice twists and turns. It turns out I just missed Willie Nelson in Eureka Springs – he was in a bus in the parking lot of City Hall when I stopped in and asked for directions.

I’m taking some time in northwest Arkansas, as the weather to the east has been miserable this week and won’t be clearing up until Saturday or so.

Today I stopped at War Eagle Caverns. On the way there, my GPS steered me onto a dirt road (what is it with GPS, my Atom, and dirt roads?). I did get a nice shot of the Atom on a bridge:

Don’t let the nice concrete bridge fool you – this is a poor dirt road. For the adventurous, it is Fate Anderson Rd (526).

Once I got back onto a real road, I headed to War Eagle Caverns. I was in a nice small tour group with 3 other people.

Some pillars (these are only about a foot and half high) near the entrance:

The bats are starting to move into the cave and go to sleep for the winter. This is a male juvenile bat:

High iron concentrations in this part of the cave stain the formations a reddish-brown:

An underground waterfall:

I’m back in Springdale, AR now. The car has 14,500 miles on it at this point.

I’m leaving today for AtomFest, the first large-scale gathering of Atoms in the US. As usual, I’ll be posting from my various stops along the way, as well as from AtomFest. 

The Atom and I are back at home. We’ve actually been here since Wednesday, but I’ve been taking time to clean up the car in preparation for a photo shoot this weekend. Right now the car has 12,113 miles on it. I think I’m still the US Atom mileage record-holder.

Party time! Excellent!

I’m in Aurora, Illinois (home of Wayne’s World) tonight. Tomorrow I’ll spend the day at Aurora Bearing talking about Atom suspension components. Tonight I stopped at the Roundhouse for dinner and it was most excellent. Highly recommended if you’re in the area. The odometer says 11,128 miles.

Not much to report today. It was quite chilly and overcast when I started out, and didn’t get any warmer. The highest temperature I saw along the way was 56 degrees. Of course, moving at 70MPH in an Atom, there’s wind chill to consider. I stopped at a discount store and purchased a second heavy jacket which I put over my original jacket, and that helped a bit. 10,709 miles so far.