A vacation spent touring NASCAR race shops in North Carolina? Yep, it's been done.

The last actual vacation I was on was three years ago this week. That vacation was the brainchild of my Packers loving college friend Carrie and myself, developed after several months of wishing and hoping before finally saying 'oh what the heck, we're already broke college students, we might as well have a week of fun.'

Our original goal was to go on spring break as neither of us had ever had the 'true' college spring break experience, opting instead to work and make money for a week while other friends were spending money on spring break. After triple and quadruple checking our financial figures (combined, our math skills were suspect at best), spring break wasn't going to be feasible. Back-up plan: June 2008.

One was responsible for mapping the driving route, the other for finding lodging. I was eventually put in charge of finding every possible Coldstone Creamery along our 1,100 mile route from Marshall, Mo. to Statesville, N.C., per Carrie's mom, Pat. We tag teamed the rest of the plans, at one point creating detailed itineraries for each day of our nine day excursion.

I'm sure many of you are scratching your heads wondering why we would go to Statesville, N.C. Well, our answer was simple.

It's in the heart of NASCARolina.

No, we didn't make up that combination word solely for our trip ? it's even used in marketing slogans, campaigns and general conversation by tourists in central North Carolina. The point of the vacation was to visit as many race shops as we could in five days. At that point in our lives, Carrie and I scheduled our Sundays around football games and NASCAR. What better way, we thought, than to show our true fandom than plan a pilgrimage to central North Carolina.

As day five wrapped up, we'd seen 14 shops and a speedway ? not bad for getting lost numerous times because we chose to trust MapQuest and my navigational skills to boot.

The previous five days had been a whirlwind, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even Spark's Note summarizing of the week would take several pages to write so here are a few noteworthy highlights.

? The tour of Lowe's Motor Speedway ends with an in-person viewing of victory lane, something many of the 20-some people on the tour said "Yeah, this is never going to happen again." Still, a very neat way to wrap up the tour.

? Hendrick Motorsports is akin to a palace, same as many of the other shops we saw. Begrudgingly, Carrie and I listened to our financial backers, erm, moms 'ooo' and 'aww' over the shop and Dale Jr's cars on display. Outside, of HMS we noticed the reflecting pools around the fountains had lots of change tossed in by former visitors. I still firmly believe that change was used for Chad Knaus's fines to Nascar.

? Once done barrel-rolling at Daytona, a full-sized wrecked Cup car can and will be smashed down to the size of a standard coffee table. In doubt of this feat ? see the display of Michael Waltrip's 2003 Daytona 500 car in its glass case in Cornelius, N.C.

? Admittedly, I squealed like an 11-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert while at Joe Gibbs Racing. Why? As I was excitedly pointing at a winning trophy in a case, I beamed as I made sure the other three with me knew that I was at my first ever Cup race when Tony Stewart won that trophy. I still remember high fiving the mass of Dale Jr. fans around me at Kansas when Stewart won that race.

? Taking the tour of Richard Childress Racing reminded me of walking through a Nature program from PBS. Mountain lions, polar bears, birds of all sorts among other animals are on display at RCR for the public to see. As my mom and I told my dad and brother, if Childress has shot it, it's in there.

? Everybody out there has a Dale Earnhardt story, according to the waitress at one of the restaurants we stopped at.

But the best highlight of the week is a running quote which Carrie and I will randomly text to each other now, making each other bust up laughing at the real story behind it. As we walked into Penske Racing South, the receptionist behind the desk, once finding out we were more tourists, said "Oh, you just missed them! Roger [Penske] and Kurt [Busch] just left a few minutes ago!"

Carrie and I looked at each other and started laughing. Our moms looked at us inquisitively. We replied," Darn, we could have asked Kurt if he remembers us from Kansas!"

The motherly looks and subsequent dual question of "WHAT did you do at Kansas?!" still echoes in my head from time to time. And I must add that they were so proud of us once we told them what happened at Kansas.

I talked to Carrie last weekend when double checking when we were at what shop that week. Three years later and we both agreed, if given the chance, we'd go back to NASCARolina in a heart beat.