Some say it is the car, some say it is the people, but today it was all about maple donuts. On Saturday, March 12, some 35 members and 22 Porsches of the Shenandoah Region started a beautiful day at Flow Porsche of Charlottesville. General Manager Tyrone Lewis, Porsche Sales Manager Jason Robson, and sales representatives John Slaughter and Stan Powell were kind enough to host a breakfast reception at the dealership as we began our planning to visit Monterey, VA and the 53rd Annual Highland Maple Festival led by Deane Parker in his new yellow Cayman S.
The group reintroduced themselves after a brief hiatus over the winter and fueled up on great coffee and pastries. More and more members continued to arrive, and soon it was obvious there would be a large group. The dealership had a beautiful Grey GTRS in the showroom; simply stunning.
A little before 10:00 a.m., Deane held a short drivers’ meeting and at the top of the hour, after thanking our hosts, we headed west on I-64 in a LONG line of colorful cars.
We headed down into Churchville where we paused at the Riverside Shopping Center to pick up a few of our western members. Then it was west on route 250, a twisty challenging road made very safe by a slow moving white Toyota in front of us all! We followed that car all the way to Highland County and into the small town of Monterey until most of the group headed north toward Blue Grass.
Winding Roads
Debbie and I stopped in Monterey in search of the elusive maple donuts and almost scored a dozen when the last box was sold out from under Debbie who was patiently waiting in line at the local dime store. We tried also to get some at the trailer Deane mentioned, but the line was three blocks long. Instead, we opted for a lunch at a local diner and made our purchase of local maple syrup. We then headed to Blue Grass where we saw the rest of our Shenandoah group starting to filter out of the Blue Grass Ruritan Club building, happily stuffed with pancakes, maple syrup, and sausage.
So, we continued to Puffenberger Orchards where we got to see the maple sap coming out of the trees and also had a third chance to score some donuts…no such luck… the line was too long. Rudy from our group joined us, and soon we were off for our drive back to Fredericksburg, over some even better roads at a spirited pace.
Draining the Syrup
The weather was gorgeous, and the company superb, and the cars all ran perfectly. It was another great outing by the Shenandoah Region. Next year we will score those maple donuts!