Months of planning, miles of road scouting, hours of map pouring and an embarrassing amount of time designing the ‘perfect’ coffee-cup giveaway…and it’s finally here; day one of the 2016 Hagerty Spring Thaw.

The parking lot this year is pretty incredible. It’s too difficult to list all the amazing cars, because I’m sure to leave something out. But here’s the thing, what’s cool at an Auction house or on the online forums isn’t what gets attention here. True, people were definitely checking out the Shelby Cobra after it was unloaded from the trailer…but a much larger crowd was gathered earlier around the Plymouth Business Coupe. That ‘regular’ MG over there? Yeah, it’s got a V8 swapped into it. Everything here has a story, and some of them are incredible. You’ve probably seen a bug-eyed sprite before, but the example here was Kevin’s first car. Not “my first car was a Sprite”, but “this Sprite here was the first car I ever bought”. I often find the story at our events is just as good as the car we’re looking at.

With the Driver’s meeting complete, we worked our way out of downtown Vernon and onto the beautiful Highways 6 and 31 towards Kaslo. Without much of a warm-up, Highway 6 sends you into roller-coaster like twists and turns, working it’s way through the Monashee Mountains. Occasionally the co-driver gets a break from hanging on, and the views delivered are fantastic. Well, they would be fantastic if we didn’t have a bit of grey and rain creeping in.

Rain? Grey? Psshh, these are not the worries of Classic Car Adventurists! Incredibly the open topped cars kept the tops down, driver and co-driver alike bundled up against the weather. It may have rained a little, okay a fair bit today, but it wasn’t as bad as day one last year. At least in 2016 no one stopped to drill holes in the floorboards!

Mid day guests were given the choice between taking the Kootenay Bay ferry and heading down the East side of the lake, or driving the West side of the lake via Nelson. The weather certainly favoured those who took the ferry, though Jim Kenzie (co-driving in the Cobra) might lead you to believe he had the wetter of the two routes!

Upon reaching Creston both halves of the rally met back up, and continued on the same route to our overnight hotel stop. The organizers do, of course, take full credit for the way the clouds parted about 30min out, and the wonderfully dry parking-lot-party that occurred as we finished for the day.

Overall, despite the rain, a fantastic day one. All our entrants, with the exception of one, arrived under their own power and in time for dinner. The unfortunate Mini, which blew a head gasket early on, was trailered to the finish where a team of experts from the entry list are working to swap out the offending gasket. Should be on the road tomorrow!

Oh yeah, and that Shelby Cobra? It’s a proper, genuine, Cobra…not a replica. Driving roughly 550km today in the rain, just like the rest of us…smiling and laughing at dinner about how great a day they had. #drive4adventure

While the hours of editing are still to come, a small gallery of images, provided by Andrew Snucins Photography, is available here:

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