GladFest car show brought lots of happy car lovers to Happy Rock

When church lets out at 11:00 on Sunday, look out, because the Hovers are on the loose!

Today it was straight to GladFest Days in Gladstone, Mo. Craft booths for mom, carnival rides for son, and oh yeah, a big car show for dad. And we smoked through all this in enough time to go see the Challenger steam locomotive on temporary display at Union Station with my wife's dad, a retired Union Pacific man and overall train nut.

It's hard to forget the GladFest car show. A big part of that is because organizers handed out a glossy, bi-fold, color entry blank at nearly every other car show I went to this summer. I keep all those kind of flyers to use in the "Upcoming Events" features, and my folder is cram-packed with GladFest information.

The promotional efforts worked, though, because this seemed like the biggest GladFest car show I can remember. Of course, the beautiful, sunny, cool fall day didn't hurt either. The lot was jammed from one end to the other with some of the best cars, trucks, and motorcycles in the Northland.

Among the notables was a Rockford Files '76 Firebird. I mean, you always see Smokey and the Bandit Trans-Ams, which are cool, don't get me wrong. But who does a Rockford Files car? And like, that's only the best show evar! No word if the owners did a lot of Rockford U-Turns with this particular example, but the tires seemed to be in pretty good shape.  (Incidentally, this is probably a good place to point out that the Rockford Files and Smokey and the Bandit are available on DVD in the Hover Motor Company Car DVD Store.)

While people were soaking in the rich Gladstone sun, the announcer was calling out an endless number of door prizes and ticket numbers, meaning that most everybody who had a car there was a winner whether they took home a trophy or not. And not only that, but since it was in conjunction with GladFest, there were actually spectators there that didn't come in their own show car.

If it weren't for the Challenger, which was also very impressive by the way, I could have spent another hour, two-hours, maybe the rest of the day studying all the neat stuff on display here. It was a great capper to the car show/cruise season in Happy Rock.

Did you miss out? That's OK. I've got more than 150 photos in the slideshow below to give you a feel for what the 2010 GladFest car show was all about.