Since Ray is at camp we decided to stay in the area and visit race shops. I can’t get but so far away from him, so staying in North Carolina was the easiest thing to do. On Monday, our first day on our own, we started out in the area around the camp. We had to go see the Richard Petty Museum. Petty Enterprises doesn’t allow you to tour their current race shops, but they have a museum where you can see the history of the Petty Family. It’s $5 to get in, but there’s a lot to see. If you’re a gun collector or shooting enthusiast, it’s worth it just to see Richard Petty’s gun collection. He has a huge collection of commemorative rifles and he owns the 43rd in the series for most of them. There are cars which were driven by Lee Petty, Richard Petty, Kyle Petty and even Adam Petty. Lots of history to see here and great memories, especially if you grew up watching NASCAR.

Just down the street from the museum though is a great little street diner named Roscoe’s. If you’re visiting the museum anywhere near breakfast or lunchtime, this is the place to go. It’s only about a 2 block walk from the museum. The pictures on the wall show the history of Randleman. It’s like stepping back in time with friendly service and great food. The trick is to save room for dessert though. Their home baked pies are excellent. I highly recommend the peanut fudge or the chocolate bourbon pies.

The next stop was Richard Childress Racing. There’s no charge to visit the race shop, although you only get to look down into the assembly room and the hauler loading room. You’re not allowed to see any other parts of the shop. You stand at windows a floor above the assembly room and can look down the rows of cars being worked on. In the hauler room, you can see the teams loading the haulers and preparing them to leave for the next race, which would be Indy. The areas you’re allowed to walk through though are marble tiled and quite impressive. RCR also has a museum. When we walked through the front door of the museum, “Chocolate” Myers was standing in the gift shop talking with the cashier. He’s now the museum’s curator. It’s $12 to visit the museum, but it’s very large and quite well done. The museum is located in what used to be the race shop. There are several videos going all the time telling history and giving detail information. Much of it is of course dedicated to information on Dale Earnhardt. Information on Childress’s current drivers, Harvick, Burton, and Bowyer, is also well promoted and there’s one whole section on wildlife where Childress displays all his hunting conquests. Overall this was the largest and most well displayed museum of racing history that we saw.