A Day in the Life

A Photoblog by Joel

A Date with Emmett

September 23, 2018

On Saturday my friend Joshten was going to be drifting his race car at Rocky Mountain Raceway. I wanted to take Emmett so he could see the drifting as well as the drag racing that would be going on. Sadly, it was also one of the last weekends that RMR was going to be open. I’m not sure why it’s shutting down, but this is the last season. Several years ago I was a track photographer there, working every weekend right on the track to take pictures of the dragsters. It was so much fun. It makes me sad to know that the tracks are going to be silenced. 

The drift races were the street legal Midnight Drags, which are a lot of fun. It’s always a surprise which two cars will come out head to head. I post a video down below of 2 Nissan GTR going at it. The white one pulls a 9.83s 1/4 mile at 141mph! Crazy fast.

Before getting to RMR, we took a side stop to The Train Shoppe in Salt Lake and took a look around. It’s a fantastic store! They have a ton of trains and tracks to sell, as well as several model trains set up to run around. It costs 25c to run a train for 2 minutes, but you get to be the conductor and choose the speed, etc. It’s a pretty cool place. Emmett wanted to take home a lot of the trains. Unfortunately, they’re a pinch out of our price range.

A boy chooses a model train from the display wall.
I’ve never really looked in to high quality model trains before, they’re quite impressive. And expensive! Averaged $250-$450 for 1 engine!
A little boy controls a model train set
The Train Shoppe had several models set up like this for kids to play and drive the trains. This is the set up for the Polar Express.
A little boy controls a model train set
Right next to the Polar Express was the Hogwarts Express, you can see Harry, Hermione, and Ron waiting to be picked up. The Quidditch Pitch is in the back, and around the bend to the right is Hogwarts Castle
A large crowd waits to buy tickets at Rocky Mountain Raceway in West Valley, Utah
We had to park about 15 minutes away from RMR, and then stood in line for at least another 20 minutes to get our tickets to go in.
An out-of-focus truck belches black smoke into the sky before racing the quarter mile.
Just as we got in the park, this blue diesel was getting ready to make it’s run. As it waited for the green, it revved up the engine and belches out so much black smoke, it was crazy! My camera mis-focused on the fence, and before I could fix it the truck launched down the track. It was *really* fast, I didn’t see the time but it was probably at most 10 second 1/4 mile.

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