All Ford Nationals: the recap

3538 vehicles in total at the show!  The second largest show in Carlisle's history!  We didn't bring my 88, instead we all rode up together in her '90.  It was probably for the best, we got there around 930 and it was packed, it was difficult to navigate the showfield in the morning to even get to the row we were supposed to be parked in.

I don't think we saw the whole field; it was sunny and 90-92° out, and with no escape from the sun/heat, was too much for the wife and kiddo to handle so we ended up leaving around 230 I think. Photo dump incoming:

That's most of what I took honestly, altho I know the wife took more. For sure there was a ton more really cool vehicles we didn't get pics of. It was like sensory overload for the kiddo with so much going on so we spent the day kind of just all over the place so he didn't get overwhelmed. Overall it was pretty cool, the vehicles were packed in pretty tight which made it hard to get pics of a lot of them, and it was just too hot for the kiddo and my Irish wife to survive all day. Also, I'd bet there were 2000 mustangs there, there were so many that we got bored of looking at them. Not the 60s of course those are cool, but the newer ones don't interest us much. Same as the 6G broncos- there were a lot of them there but we didn't look at most of that whole section.
The field was huge, it took us awhile just to get the lay of the land, and we never saw everything. There was a full swap meet too, but im told it would have taken most of the day just to walk that!  There was a dyno there that the mustang crowd was all playing on all morning, all the specialty cars (like the GT40) they were driving up to the grandstands for special displays, celebrity panels, there was a burnout contest up at the grandstands (that was after we left), and figure with 3500+ cars there had to be 4-5k+ people walking around. It was cool and everyone had fun, but it was a big show. Ive never been to a show so big before, it was crazy. Tack the heat on top and it was a bit much to take it all in. I had thrown some folding chairs in the back of her bronco that we brought along but i didnt think to pack a canopy, so there really wasnt much escape from the heat.  If it wasnt for that i think we would have stuck around longer, the crowd was really crazy at 9 because thats when gates opened to the public, but it calmed down and was much more manageable to explore the show after 11-12, it was just too hot by then.  You really need to go for multiple days to hope to see it all.

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