Welcome to the home base for Rendezvous 2022 information!
A dedicated group of volunteers are helping to pull this together. Special Thank You to Our Rendezvous ’22 Sponsors!
GOLD SPONSOR: Morrie’s Auto Group, Golden Valley, MN
SILVER SPONSORS: Moss Motors, Goleta, HERE California, Heacock Classic Collector Car Insurance
HERE WE GO!
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE EVENT OVERVIEW. (12MB)
EVENT SPECIFICS:
A gathering of vintage-foreign automobiles attended by fans from Canada and the USA! June 9-12 • Fortune Bay Resort Casino • Tower, MN
• ONE CAR: $85 Includes 2 adults and children 15 or under. Add $10 for each add’l adult.
• SECOND CAR + ADULT (same family): Add $30
• BANQUET TICKETS ARE $30 each. You won’t go to bed hungry!
Click to download the forms and read the event overview (PDF)
VALVE COVER RACING: 10 am Saturday. Valve cover dimensions cannot exceed 13″ wide by 36″ long. Height of front bumper must be 3″ or less (to allow racer to butt against start bar). A Jaguar straight 6 valve cover will fit! Watch to get some ideas!
BEST OF SHOW voting will be done by the public from 1-4pm on Saturday. Voting tickets will be sold by the Boys and Girls Club of Lake Vermillion. All ticket sale proceeds will benefit their club. The show will be held rain or shine.
Email questions to John Engstrom: jmjengstrom@yahoo.com
EVENT UPDATE BLOG: By John Engstrom
MAY 15 UPDATES FOR RENDEZVOUS 2022! FORTUNE BAY RESORT CASINO
By John Engstrom
I called Fortune Bay on Monday, May 2nd and made arrangements to go up on May 4th to talk about food at the event. They told me that it was snowing up there at that time. I went up on Wednesday the 4th then, to talk to everyone. No snow on the Highways and only patches of snow in the woods but the lakes and ponds were still completely frozen and the ice was White…. no sign of it turning dark and going out yet. But with the weather coming up, it looks like we are going to just skip Spring and go directly into Summer.
I am sorry to say that we are going to have to cancel our plans for an Autocross since it turns out that most insurance companies don’t want to handle it and the others who would handle it have put expensive conditions on what we would have to do before they would insure it, like putting concrete barriers up around the whole track to keep people at least 25 feet from the track. The barriers alone would have cost us 4K, so we just couldn’t afford it.
We worked out the details for the meet and greet on Thursday, the Saturday night Banquet and the Sunday Morning Continental Breakfast. The Friday Night Fish Fry will be run through the Sunset Steakhouse at Fortune Bay. You need to place a reservation first. CLICK HERE. A couple of days later, Terry Jacobs went up and went through the whole route of the Poker Run finalizing it and talking to all of the spots who will have the cards for the Poker Run. Everyone is excited about it. The cards in each place will be held in a Wren House that says Rendezvous 22 on it that you can open the side of and take your card out of.
Everything is coming together for the event. Lots of details to do yet but the pieces are in place!
NORTH OF THE BORDER DRIVING TIPS: If you are coming down from Thunder Bay, you can take Highway 1 over from Highway 61 on Lake Superior. The closest city down highway 61 would be Illigen city. Highway 1 is a pretty good sports car road, with lots of curves in parts. Be sure, though, that you are gassed up before you go on highway 1 as there are NO services until you get up to ELY which is 63 miles. A fun road to take though, along it, you will pass through a burned over area where the Greenwood fire was last year.
FOR THOSE GOING UP 35W and then through Cloquet. Stop at Gordy’s Hi-Hat for something to eat. It’s a drive-in of note. It may even be a state law that you have to stop there and eat. I know that I feel bad if I don’t stop there. It’s going to be Summer and it’s going to be fun!
–John Engstrom, jmjengstrom@yahoo.com
March 15: If you’ve been on the fence about it, things are looking good. Borders are open and it’s easy to get to from Canada. We’ve booked a Bluegrass Band to play during the show and food trucks will be there. There is still plenty of time to register and reserve a room. Our original block of rooms is used up but this is a big hotel and they have a lot more rooms available. Still though, remember to say Rendezvous when you book a room.
It’s easy to get to and we have a lot of activities planned. The overall plans are all done, now it’s mostly the details!! So if you have work planned to do on your car, get ‘er done. Some of us who shall remain nameless may have too much work to be done on their car and could be coming in a Swedish car instead of a British car.
February 15: Things are rolling along nicely! InterMarque is excited to announce that event registration is NOW ACTIVE! Click to download the forms. Special thanks to Lynn Schulte of the MN Metropolitan Club for working with our team to create the icon for this event!
SPEAKER SELECTED! Mark Brandow will be our banquet speaker. He plans on talking about Vintage Racing. He owns a classic car repair shop in the Twin Cities and is a Vintage Racer. He has been racing his MGTC for 50 years and knows a lot of people in the Vintage Racing scene. He is enthusiastic about Vintage Racing and promotion of the sport.
NEW EVENT ADDED! 10am Saturday in parking lot. Valve Cover Racing. LEARN MORE
2022 RENDEZVOUS REGISTRATION FEES – ALL AMOUNTS ARE IN US DOLLARS
• ONE CAR: $85 Includes 2 adults and children 15 or under. Add $10 for each add’l adult.
• SECOND CAR + ADULT (same family): Add $30
• BANQUET TICKETS ARE $30 each. You won’t go to bed hungry!
Click to download the forms.
Email questions to John Engstrom: jmjengstrom@yahoo.com
OCTOBER 15 UPDATES
Terry Jacobs of the Jaguar Club has done a wonderful job. Last week he took some time and drove up to Fortune Bay Resort Casino to work on the Friday events. Final registration materials should be ready next month. Here’s where we are at.
FRIDAY will be a driving tour combined with a Poker run. Terry has laid out a wonderful area tour plus he has contacted stops along the way to pick up poker cards. There is really no time limit on the tour/run so people can take a leisurely drive through the day. Stopping at sites to pick up their poker hand cards. You will not need to take any tours or pay anything if you wish. There will be stops at the Hull-Rust Mine (if you wish to go down for the mine tour, tickets will need to be ordered ahead of time, as the mine tour takes about an hour and a half), The Bear Center and The Wolf Center to name a couple more. He worked with the Grand Ely Lodge on a lunch buffet.
The drive will lead down to a BWCAW canoe launch entry point and then along the Echo Trail for 25 miles, with many twisties and turns along the way. The drive will also include loops around an area lake. The last stop for a poker card will be at athe Bois Forte museum located on the Casino property. On Fridays, the Casino has a fish fry for a place to eat supper if you wish to eat there. After supper, the ones with the highest 6 poker hands (divided up evenly from Canada and the US) will compete in a casino poker game with a casino dealer. There will be cash prizes for the winners.
We are planning to put all of the events as well as tour directions on a trip tic (like AAA used to have) that the user can flip over for all the information for the Rendezvous as well as drive directions. Terry has also contacted a flat bed towing service, a garage where owners can do their own repairs as well as listings for emergency services and other area information. This way all the information will be in one place.
Registration information should be available next month. The dates are: Check in Thursday June 9th, Drive and poker run Friday June 10th, Car show and Banquet Saturday June 11th and check out Sunday morning. Rooms are open for occupancy after 3 pm. The Venue is Fortune Bay Resort Casino, 1430 Bois Forte Road Tower, MN, 55790 218-753-6400. Registration and more information should be available next month. Registration for this event will be by mail.
– John
SEPTEMBER 15 UPDATES
We haven’t really decided on what to name Rendezvous 2022, although it rhymes and that’s a good sign. I guess we could call it Home on the Range also. You know your on the range when the compass in your car just goes nuts. On a straight stretch of road the car’s compass would switch from North East to South to North, then to East and after that West and South East. There’s still plenty of Iron in them their hills.
I took a field trip last week up to Fortune Bay Resort Casino on the South Shore of Lake Vermillion in Tower, MN. It looks like all the fires that have gone through the area were East and South since there was no sign of fires anywhere that I could see. Highway 1 from Ely to Lake Superior was closed about 20 miles east of Ely but was supposed to open up within the next week.
At the casino, I met with the director of public relations, Brian, who took my wife and I on a tour of the casino and hotel, showing us the places that we would be using. Important to me was the ballroom where we would be holding a banquet. The ballroom is large and divided into three separate rooms that can be opened up to make one large room. The room we would use for registration is just across the hall from the registration desk, easy to find and fairly large.
Dates for the Rendezvous are Thursday, June 9th through Saturday, June 11th, 2022. Deparating Sunday.
Hotel reservations are available NOW. Event registration starts December 1.
Rough Draft of the Schedule for Rendezvous 2022
Thursday, June 9th: Guests can check in starting at 3PM. We will have the Sumac room for check-in which is directly across from the registration desk. They will provide a cash bar in the room. We will also be having appetizers as well as soft drinks in the Sumac room. For parking, they have an overflow lot which will be roped off for us to park our cars in so that other hotel guests won’t park in it. Thursday night attendees can settle, or go the the bar that’s located within the casino. Also have two other restaurants within the facility and they can spend some time in the casino if they wish.
Friday, June 10th: We will be scheduling a Scenic Tour to drive in the area about mid-morning. There will be a lunch stop somewhere halfway along the way. The route is yet to be worked out but there are plenty of places to go to. We are also talking about a Poker Run being part of it. Mid-afternoon into the evening is open for those who wish to do some “touristy” things. I went into Ely and went to the Wolf Sanctuary as well as the Bear Sanctuary and both were very interesting. There is also the Sudan Mine which is close to the casino (Mine is currently closed). On the casino grounds is the Bois Forte Museum which is very interesting and informative to see. The casino sits on a large lake and has boats, canoes, and kayaks for rent. It also has a golf course which goes around the casino. You could also schedule a ride with the mailman on his water taxi route around the lake, space is very limited though. We will supply a list of things to do and places to see. The casino also has two restaurants to go to and there are plenty of restaurants in Ely to go to.
Saturday, June 11th: Noon-3PM car show in the designated Rendezvous 2022 lot. The casino will provide a band playing 50’s and 60’s music during the show along with a cash bar and a food truck. From 5-9PM we will be having a banquet at the hotel in their banquet room.
Sunday June 12th: Check out. A possible Breakfast Buffet in the morning before you leave.
Other Information: We have 60 rooms reserved with the rates locked in. They were expecting to raise the rates but our pricing will not change. Thursday night the rate is $104.00, Friday and Saturday nights the rooms are $135.00 (this is in US funds). There are a lot of options for things to do and see in the area. Reservations to open up on December 1st.
More to come as it develops. We will post info to the InterMarque.org website and include in future InterMarque Monthly emails.