2015 National Parks Tour

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2013: 2015 National Parks Tour
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Steve Jelf, Parkerfield KS on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 11:54 am:

The new Model T Times has a story about a new online MTFCI chapter and a planned tour of several western national parks in 2015. But when I looked at the chapter website I didn't find any contact information. Anybody here know something about this?


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 12:04 pm:

Ken Burns did a PBS documentary on the first National Parks tour in 1926 or 1928. There were no Ts on that tour, and it took about six weeks, IIRC.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Kirk Peterson on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 02:17 pm:

James Sanford jfsanford46@gmail.com


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Richard Gould on Friday, May 24, 2013 - 11:47 pm:

Is it possible to post some info on the tour? Perhaps there is a website or something already in print I could see. Sounds like a tour I'd like to attend.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Steve Jelf, Parkerfield KS on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 12:04 am:

The website is new, and a work in progress. It does give some information on the places scheduled for the tour, estimated to take six to seven weeks.

http://vintagetimetravelers.com/Home.html


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Kirk Peterson on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 09:12 am:

I received this information in an email from Jim.
The verbiage is similar to the MTFCI article.

WELCOME TO Vintagetimetravelers.Com

We are the newest Model T Ford Club International (MTFCI) Chapter; as our name implies we are an internet club with members all over the world. We are primarily interested in the recreation of historical auto tours in our vintage vehicles.

At the HCCA 75th annual tour in July 2012 the guest speakers were Lee and Jane Whiteley. They wrote the book “The Play Ground Trail” - The National Park –to – Park Highway: To and Through the National Parks of the West in 1920”. With this personal introduction to the 1920 Park to Park highway through 11 National Parks there was a small group of confirmed long distance model T Ford drivers that thought we could re-enact that 1920 tour in 2015.

I contacted the National director of the NPS and was directed to the 2016 national parks Centennial Coordinator. After talking with NPS, we set the kick off date to August 25, 2015. This date allows for the NPS to use our tour in promoting the Centennial Celebration of the NPS in 2016. August 25, 1916 is the date President Wilson signed the NPS Act, creating the NPS.

The tour will travel to 10 of the original 11 Parks visited in 1920. We will be driving our century old vintage cars and camper trailers, and yes, we do plan to camp along the way. The vintage vehicles include a 1924 White “Yellowstone Bus”. We will start in Rocky Mountain National Park on August 25, 2015 and proceed counter clockwise to Yellowstone, Glacier, Rainier, Crater Lake, Lassen Volcanic, Yosemite, Kings Canyon(Grant), Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde and back to our starting point in Colorado for a total of about 4500 miles.

The tour may take 6 to 7 weeks and will be difficult to keep to a schedule. We will be traveling at a top speed of 38 MPH on secondary roads. To keep anybody who would like to “Tag Along” informed as to our location we will be streaming live video to the cloud, and blogging to our web site, when we have signal.

We invite all vintage car clubs to travel with us on any portion of this Historical National Parks tour. The official tour consists of 6 vintage vehicles including the White Yellowstone bus. All “Tag alongs” will be on their own and will not be considered official participants of our tour. We would hope with 2 years notice that some antique car clubs would consider their annual tour to do a leg of our National Park to National Park tour. This allows time for “tag alongs” to make all their own arrangements. The leg that comes to my mind is the west coast. (Crater Lake, Lassen, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia National Parks) We will update the website VintageTimeTravelers.com with tour routes as they are determined.

We will be touring with the unofficial support of the NPS. There will be photo stops and fireside chats with the local Park Ranger historians. We too will have our tour historians Lee and Jane Whitely for impromptu historical chats along the way. The NPS would like to look back at their past 100 years and look forward to the next century. Spradley Barr Ford in Ft Collins has offered to bring the latest Ford Hybrids to the Rocky mountain park for the kick off to represent the future. Although we are a chapter MTFCI, we welcome all antique car club members and individuals to join in the celebration of the first 100 years of our National Parks.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Steve Jelf, Parkerfield KS on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 10:29 am:

Jim's email, the magazine story, and the website all say the tour is to ten of the eleven original parks. But if you count the names, you see it's actually eleven out of twelve. No word on why they're skipping Zion. This looks like it's going to be a great experience. I hope I can have a touring ready for touring by then.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 11:13 am:

You need to catch the PBS program on that original tour.


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