Santa drives a Monster Truck here...

Aaron and I decided to do something semi-fun this year. We (I) wanted to take the kids to see the lights at the Bristol Motor Speedway. To be honest, I've never been a big sports fan, and racing is something I've only seen on the movie "Cars". Every year the local racetrack decorates the outside with lights and fills up part of the middle of the track with ice and makes a skating rink in the middle. Sounds good, right?
So for Family Night we pile the kids in the car and drive the 30 minutes to the track. Holy CoW!! It was much bigger than I thought it would be. These Tennesseeans like their racing.
So there we are in the parking lot of the race track and we get in line. Then we realize that the line we have gotten into is long. And not just long, but Very long. Actually, all of the lines were long. We spent 40 minutes in line just waiting to get in. You kind of hit that point where you want to say- "Hey kids, lets do this another time..." But you can't because you are trapped in traffic, there is no way out, and so you deal with it. By the time we got to the attendant that takes your money the kids were already tired of it. There were some girls that gave us a booklet and program as we drove up. As we rolled up the window she said, "Enjoy the Christmas lahts." I knew what she meant... But Aaron had a good time saying- Lots?? I thought we were here to see the lights? I don't want to see lots. I want to see lights!" Obviously she was saying lights... but as we are in the south it comes out different. Fortunately the windows were rolled up and she didn't hear us mocking her.
We finally got moving. We decided to make the best of this slow traffic experience and turn on the Christmas music that the Speedway had provided courtesy of a local radio station. Yay! We were on our way...
We begin driving and the car in front of us stops. This is supposed to be a steady stream of traffic. Enjoy the lights, keep on driving, ohhh and ahhh... you know? No. Not these people. They stop their car. They take pictures. Did I bring my camera? No.. I thought about it and forgot it. Besides, my camera is dying and doesn't do well with night shots. Really, I don't mind if people take pictures at night, but this car in front of us wanted to take a shot of every angle of the lights. They would sit and wait and wait while the light display changed in front of our eyes so they could catch all the blinking lights in various stages. At this point, Aaron and I just look at each other and shake our heads. 200 feet later, same thing. I am really starting to get annoyed. I have already spent 45 minutes in line for this stupid thing and now I am stuck behind someone that needs to take a picture of every lightbulb in this place. So much for Christmas spirit, right? Here I am, trying to enjoy the season and bring my children out to see the lights and I'm getting totally irritated that this person won't drive. I thought about pulling around them and passing them, but I had to wonder if there was some sort of light viewing ettiquette that I would be breaking. Am I supposed to do that? Is that okay? What is wrong with me that I want to get done with this? So, just as I am really considering cutting around them (it's been about 10 minutes), they pulled off to the side and stopped at a rest stop. (Yes, this is so huge they had 2-3 reststops.) So off we go again. Driving, oooooing, ahhhhing, Mercedes asking what this is and that is. It was a lot of fun as we got going. Then I saw it. A Christmas light display depicting an RV Christmas. I did a double take. Yes, they had it all down. A Winnebago decked out to celebrate Christmas redneck style. It was then that I wished I had my camera. As we drove along I also saw Santa in a Monster Truck. What the heck?? Where I'm from he drives a sleigh with 8 reindeer. Not a monster truck. This was a nightmare. How could they do that to my Santa???
*Sigh*
After driving at a gruelling pace of 3mph for 80 minutes we finally got out of there. By the end we were pretty tired of the lights. The enthusiastic "YAY's" turned into "oh's".
Overall, other than traffic it was a great show and I might consider going again in 2 years.