Holy cow Ojibwe Forests Rally is only 4 weeks away! I'm super excited that Ojibwe is back on the National Championship Calender and the top teams will be back, including Ken Block, David Higgins, ACP and Adam Yeoman of FY Racing. Want the best seat in the house? The best way to spectate is to volunteer. Sign up to work today! It takes an enormous commitment of time and people to organize a rally. You can get in on the excitement and see the racing up close by volunteering as an event worker. - See more at: http://ojibweforestrally.com/workers#sthash.vWZZqD5Z.dpuf Please, please sign up online to volunteer ASAP if you're planning on going. Volunteering really does get you the best seat in the house. Who is going? If you want to help banner, drive some of the stage roads and use a route book to find locations to put up caution tape, on Thursday, August 22nd shoot me a PM. No experience needed but you can't drive like a nut, competitors will out in the woods doing recce at the same time and we don't need any accidents. We are looking at meeting near Motley, MN late morning with a 2nd meet up near Park Rapids, MN for people coming from the North. Its a nice relaxed day in the woods.
I'm busy the next TWO Tuesdays, but Brenda and I will come out on 8/13 to where ever the Tuesday meetup is and can answer questions about the event, I'll bring a routebook or two, as well, just for fun.
What's the approximate schedule for this event? It looks like from the 2012 info that it starts mid-day on Friday and into the night, then it wraps up on Satruday with the super special stage? Trying to plan time off work/away from home to spectate. Are all the spectator locations accessible from public roads or do you have to get to them before the rally starts?
Friday will start in Detroit Lakes, MN with competitors leaving there around 4:30 pm to transit to the night stages in the Paul Bunyan State Forest North of Akeley, MN and service in Akeley. It can be cool to watch the teams work on the cars in service, especially if there are major repairs needed. Saturday will start with a Super Special at the Buffalo River Race Park Speedway in Glyndon, MN (West of Detroit Lakes, MN) in the morning followed by stages in the White Earth State Forest North of Park Rapids all day Saturday. Finish Saturday evening will be back in Detroit Lakes. We are checking the stage roads this Saturday and should have Spectator Guides available on the website soon after the course and schedule are finalized. I will try to post a link when it is available. Spectator areas are all accessible form open roads. If you don't want to fight the crowds you can volunteer as a course marshal and get your own spot to watch the action, not to mention access to the after party where you can hang out with the competitors. You can volunteer for only one day if you can't make it on Friday. It's looking to be a great weekend of rally.
I would volunteer, but I'll be taking my 16 year old to his first rally, so we'll concentrate on the traditional spectator experience for now. Looking forward to seeing the spectator guides, sounds like we are safe to plan on leaving the cities around noon on Friday and be back home late Saturday night?
That sounds like a good plan. Depending on what time you leave the cities you may be able to see some of the Friday stages.
Just booked my campsite in Park Rapids. Staying here: http://www.sceniclodging.com/big_pine/big_pine.htm Will the spectator guide be available soon? Nevermind, found it on the Facebook page.
Here is the link to the spectator guide including the spectator points for watching. http://www.rally-america.com/VenueFiles/OFR_2013_Guide_WEB.pdf
Headquarters is the Holiday Inn in Detroit Lakes. The hotel is fully booked right now (to the best of my knowledge), but that's where registration will take place for competitors and workers. I'll bring some spectator materials with me on Tuesday.
Handed out a few spectator guides at last night's meet up at Boom Island (what? you weren't there!?) , and realized that you can easily come up on Saturday and spectate the White Earth Forest stages.
I really wanted to go to this but my work scheduled the first ever golf outing. I'm not an avid golfer, I'd much rather go watch Ken Block!
This is the first year, after a few years off, that Ojibwe Forests Rally is back on the national rally calendar. Add to that Ken Block is in 2nd place in the over all points behind David Higgins and you can bet this will be a great two days of rally. Hard to compare that to a few hours wandering around the lawn chasing a ball. Rally on!
Tonie and I would so be there, but it's the same weekend as the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk she's participating in. Same issue as last year.
Should we try to plan a mini-meet for dinner one of the days? There are a few restaurant choices in DL, but I was thinking closer to the rally stages... West Forty Restaurant in Park Rapids or Zorbaz on Little Sand Lake (8 miles out of Park Rapids) would both be good choices, either one should accommodate a decent sized group.
Good Life Cafe in Park Rapids is really good, or the restaurants in Dorset (between Park Rapids and Nevis) are pretty good too! Unfortunately, as my wife and I are part of the rally, we won't be able to join you.
At this point people are having luck finding rooms in Park Rapids, a bit pricey, and also in Ponsford, MN, more reasonable. Camping is definitely be less.
I can't get out of work Friday but I can head up on Saturday for some spectating! If there are any open slots for volunteering on Saturday please let me know (I would PM you but I'm a new member as of this morning and I don't think I can use the PM thing yet).
Get signed up at www.rallymasterpro.com and just mark that you want to work (Marshal) on Saturday only, and that you will be travelling up there on Saturday. I'll check with the worker chief and see what he is thinking about getting workers checked in without them having to go to DL first. Otherwise, grab a copy of the spectator guide (link above), and enjoy the spectator locations!
I hope folks did make it out to see some of the stages this weekend! I got to meet Josh and Isaac from Oak Leaf Auto Salvage on Saturday morning. There were a lot of great looking street Subarus up there! The Forester did well for us as the "0" car, though I noticed on the drive home on Sunday that it isn't making much boost (and confirmed it this morning on the way to work). I'll have to find the new leak. If the Lamco gauge is to be believed, I'm only getting about 6psi of boost right now. I need to change the air cleaner and clean the MAF, no matter what, after this weekend's dust! The next rally is LSPR, "Lake Superior Performance Rally" based out of Houghton, MI in October.
I will definitely try and make it to that one too.....should be a good showdown for the national championship.....and I totally missed the OakLeaf guys up there...I saw the wing they were getting signed but didn't know it was for them....I thought someone found it on the course.
^ It was good seeing you again Mike. I ran into 08aspenSTI, KA-T_240 and a few other Fargo locals down there too. This was my first rally and I had a great time. I definitely didn't grasp beforehand how much driving around was involved, next time I might not try to shuffle around so much. Some of those single lane roads get a little sketchy when you're in an Armada and there's a Sequoia barreling past at 30MPH...
yeah good seeing you again too. Glad you enjoyed your first time up there ...always a good time!! .....yeah that road going to the spectator stage was a bit narrow.....another reason why marshaling is better
In many cases the spectator point access roads are exactly like the stage roads, except that we aren't using them this year. That's certainly true for stages 10/13. The road coming down from the North to the spectator area has been used in the past as part of a stage.
That was fun, first rally for me and my boy. It is a lot of driving and walking if you don't just want to be in one spot all day. We ended up behind Ken Block on the transit back from the super special and rode the elevator with Rhianon Smyth at the hotel, that was cool. We got to check out all the spectator areas and saw some day and night stages, the super special and service areas were cool too. We also took my wife's Jetta down some roads it didn't belong on. That's a lot packed into a day and half and we didn't even get to see everything. Already talking about what to do next year.
