2006 7th Annual South Haven Festival of Cars
July 8, 2006

Several Club members departed from the Niles Courthouse at 7 a.m. to cruise to the South Haven Festival of Cars.  The trip went by quickly and we soon arrived at the check-in entrance.  The workers took the $10 entrance fee and told us where we could park.  It didn't take long to see that although it was only 8 a.m., the show was almost full and we were unable to park where the workers told us to go.  So, we drove a circle around town and asked them again where we could park.  Finally, after a couple more laps we found enough spaces to accommodate all of the cars in our caravan.

After parking and getting settled in, we went to the registration tent.  Some of us managed to get a dash plaque, but they ran out before all of us were through the line. We were given our vehicle info card and some other paperwork, which we took back to our cars.  At that point, we were all very hungry and we found a little restaurant that was serving breakfast.  When we were done eating we waddled back to our cars where we learned that we had to move all of our chairs and put all of our accessories in the car.  Apparently, one of the sheets that were given to us during registration was a list of rules of conduct.  In so many words, the rules basically said that you were allowed to park your car and set your chair directly behind the car.  That's it, no coolers, no cleaning products, or any of the typical items that most owners bring to car shows with them.  It seems that some of the businesses complained that the car owners were blocking entrance to their stores, so this was the solution.   Obviously, there were plenty of people upset over this.  We also heard rumblings from car owners throughout the day that certain businesses did not want the car show in town because it hurt their business.  Since it was common knowledge which businesses thought that way, most people avoided them completely and patronized other locations instead.  Every store or restaurant we went into was packed and the employees were doing their best to keep up with the volume of customers.

This is not a judged car show, but there were participants choice and spectators choice ballots.  One of our club members was told that he was a winner and he was going to be able to participate in the parade of winners.  As the day drew to a close, we gathered by the announcing stage and watched the winners drive up to accept their awards.  This was a nice way for people to see which cars were the winners.

South Haven is a beautiful town and there is enough to see and do that it makes the day go by quickly.  From the below pictures you will see that it is located on Lake Michigan and it is tightly integrated with the nautical community.  Hopefully, they will be able to continue putting on this show in it's current location and learn to be more accommodating to the car owners needs by making adjustments to the rather ridiculous rules.

(Click on Pictures to Enlarge)