A Convention Vacation – Part 4

Friday was Concours and Fun Day at the convention. Since we'll never have a Corvair nice enough for a Councours and we aren't fans of fun (big grin), we decided to play tourists in Boston for the day. We got a decently early start and drove to the Museum of Fine Arts. The museum, while quite pricey, was beautiful. The exhibits were varied and well-displayed. I especially enjoyed the musical instruments room. After a quick lunch, we paid the ransom required to get the Suburban out of the parking lot and headed off in search of the Old North Church. The rumors regarding the challenges of navigating the streets of Boston are not unfounded. We had, what we believed to be, good Google directions, but there were still a couple of instances where I had to ask the lovely Loriann to cross over three lanes of traffic to prevent us from going to Cambridge. We finally found the church, but also found that that section of Boston does not allow on-street parking for non-residents, so we pulled into the only garage we saw. It was a short-lived visit, however, since they did not allow large SUVs. We were able to park next door at an outdoor lot, but even that wasn't easy since squeezing the Suburban into the parking spot we were directed to required both myself and the attendant directing the lovely Loriann..

Finally free of the vehicle, we walked the few blocks up the hill to tour the church, then Paul Revere’s house, and, following part of the Freedom Trail, ended up at Quincy Market. After an hour or so there, we headed back to the Suburban via the outdoor produce market. That was quite an experience as well, with the sellers exhibiting the stereotypical Boston attitude towards the customers – an attitude that prompted the lovely Loriann to pass right by many of the stalls.

Getting the Suburban out of parking lot purgatory was not nearly as painful as it had been at the museum. Also not as painful was negotiating the half-dozen turns required to get us onto the Mass Pike and on our way back to Sturbridge. After some stop-and-go rush hour traffic we made it back to our campsite before dark where we enjoyed another delicious dinner followed by S’mores for dessert.

We had decided we needed to be back in Baltimore for Sunday, so we cut short our State Park stay by one night and pulled up stakes (literally) Saturday morning. It took a couple hours to pack our home-away-from-home back into and onto the Suburban and then hitch Lucy back up, but we were able to make it to the Car Display before noon. We were overwhelmed by the numbers – nearly 200 pristine Corvairs.

The lovely Loriann likened it to a dream visit to the Corvair Ranch, where all the hulks have been magically transformed back to showroom condition. I wandered around snapping a few photos, which can be seen here, but was especially enamored with the '62 Monza wagon on display in the '62-only area. It got me quite excited about my upcoming acquisition of Phil's wagon that's supposed to occur this month.

I also took a quick gander at the outdoor used parts vendors. Regarding part purchases, I was kept on a short leash being strongly urged to apply the “is it necessary to keep a car on the road” filter to all I saw for sale. Hence, I came away from the convention with a Clark’s bag containing only a couple fan-belts and a couple oil filters. I did, however, splurge on appropriate apparel for the girls. It’s impossible to say no to your daughters when they call you on your cellphone asking you to “please” buy each of them a Corvair t-shirt. A very nice way to end our convention experience.

We hit the road for home around two and pulled up in front of the house about eight hours later. An exhaust gasket leak in the Suburban caused us some concern pulling the hills of the CT, but all-in-all, the Suburban, with its odometer now reading over 315,000 miles, performed flawlessly. TYL!