How the New-Garden came to be

Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog!

As some of you might know, I just spent the last several days in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin at the beautiful Road America for the Kholer GP.

This was our groups third year back at RA, we haven't missed a year since IndyCar returned.

Each year we participate in the most awesome campsite contest.

This year, we created Josef's New-Garden.

It was very well received.

Some of you may have already seen it on Twitter, or walked by it during the weekend, or maybe you saw it on the NBCSN broadcast of the race, either way, I'm here to tell you about how the New Garden came to be.

Two years ago, after we lost the best campsite competition we knew we had to step up our game for the following year.

The theme was "Power" presumably so after the previous years race winner, Will Power.

So we built the 'Will Power Power Bar.'

To say the least, it was a huge success.

Will Power himself even came by to check it out.

We won the best campsite competition that year.

There's even a slightly dorky video showcasing it if you wanna take a look.

After last years success we had no idea how we were going to be able to top last year.

That Saturday night as we were discussing what we should do the next year, Scott said, "if Josef Newgarden wins tomorrow we should plant ourselves a New Garden right here."

I immediately jumped on board (rightfully so as I am a Newgarden fan). I said regardless of Josef winning the race or not we needed to have a New Garden next year.

So all year, whenever the topic of our campsite ideas for the next year was discussed, I brought up the New Garden.

Then, a few weeks before Road America Scott finally confirmed to me that we were going to do it.

So a week later I found myself dying laughing as I printed off Newgarden heads of all sizes.

Then when we finally arrived at Road America Scott assembled his garden, filled it with dirt, and then planted some flowers.

Then came the real fun as we strategically placed all of the Newgarden heads until we were satisfied. And oh were we satisfied.

It was freaking hilarious! Better then we could have imagined!

Once our entire site was decorated, I headed to Twitter to share with the IndyCar world what we had created.

Turned out everyone loved it!

Even Josef!

For the next three days people would walk by our garden and give up a thumbs up, or a compliment, they'd snap pictures, or even so much as say that they had been looking for us.

On Friday, Tracy talked to Marshall Pruett and told him about our garden, he said he had already heard about it from Josef!

Then on Saturday, I was trying to make a sandwich and I was told to come outside immediately because someone was outside looking for me.

It turned out to be a guy from NBCSN.

He said he had been keeping up with me on Twitter and was wondering if he could bring by a camera crew later to film the garden to use in the race broadcast.

I was in shock.

Then later that afternoon when I was getting ready to wave the green flag for qualifying the small group of us were talking with the guys in timing and scoring.

The one guy says, "have you heard that someone planted a New Garden in turn one?"

I said, "yeah, thats me!"

And then the guy at the computer said, "you're garden is in an article on IndyCar website."

And I was like, no way.

But sure enough he pulled up the article and there it was.

Once again, I was in shock.

THEN, later that night we're hanging out at our campsite and what do you know, Josef Newgarden shows up to see the Garden.

I was in shock.

He absolutely loved it.

He was gracious and shook all of our hands and then he got right down in the garden.

It was so cool.

Now, I'm not going to share with you all the details, I'd rather keep those memories for myself, but I will say it was an unforgettable night.

The next day, while we were watching the race we had my computer streaming the broadcast so we could see all of the action.

Then all of the sudden our garden is being shown on the broadcast.

And then I hear my name.

And then there's me shaking Josef Newgarden's hand.

To say we were all freaking out would be an understatement.

I thought maybe our garden would have been in the pre race, but nope, it was right smack dab in the middle of the broadcast.

So freaking cool.

So even though we didn't win the best campsite competition (its still a bit of a controversial topic so I am not going to go into that), I still walked away from RA today feeling like a winner.

Even though the judges didn't think we were the winners everyone else did. We won the popular vote that's for sure.

What really mattered was that NBCSN loved it, Josef Newgarden loved it, we loved it, and most importantly the IndyCar fans loved it.

Thats what I love so much about this sport.

We are the best fans.

So, to wrap things up, thank you to everyone who supported and loved on the Garden as much as we did.

Because of you, we are considering brining back the garden again next year, but maybe in a smaller form just to honor how great the garden is.

Either way, we'll be back bigger and better then ever at RA next year.

So you better stop by turn one and see us.

xxkaitlyn