Arizona Sand Fest struck ground in 2007 with the first event at Canyon Raceway Park, just north of Phoenix, AZ. The event took place during the weekend of April 13th through the 15th. Arizona is a great place to host any off-road event. With its open desert and trails that go on for days, this event can turn into a vacation very quickly.

After arriving Thursday night and getting settled into our campsite/booth, we were up and ready first thing in the morning to start our weekend. The show opened its doors at 11:00 a.m. giving vendors and spectators most of the day to register their race vehicles and a chance to practice on the racecourse before the races started. There was a 1.5 mile off-road course that started in the stadium and ended behind of the stadium. The race was open to four classes: Side X Sides, Off-Road Trucks, Sand Rails, and whatever else anybody wanted to race. Now for those who missed the show, hopefully the pictures will give it justice. It was action-packed with bumping, rubbing, jumping, rolling, nose-diving, and anything and everything you can think of that you can do during a race. The only think I regret is not bringing any sunblock so I could stay outside longer.

For those who where racing or not racing, camp sites were available to everybody for the entire weekend. What was a bonus and I really liked about this show is that you where able to bring your pit bikes or Side X Sides to get around. The best way I can explain the layout of this show is that it was like being at Glamis on Vendor Row. All of the booths were outside in the dirt and it actually looked like you where at vendor row. So the spectators were allowed to bring their Rhinos or pit bikes to drive around to check out the vendors and watch the race. If you didn’t have anything to get around, there were bleacher seats available for you to sit down and take a load off.

During the times that the course wasn’t being used, they had a sprint car that you could ride in and go around the oval track, drifting the corners, and hitting speeds of over 100 mph. (I was too chicken for the sprint car, so we will just move on.) If the high speed drifting wasn’t up your alley and you just wanted to observe something, in the middle of the oval track was a freestyle motocross jump. Throughout the day they had free-style motocross riders pulling out all the latest tricks. When the sun started settling down, the lights came on and they opened up the straight track and hosted a sand drag event, which was divided into the same four classes as the off-road course. I didn’t see too many sand cars on the race course, but they all came out to play at night on the straight track.

Saturday night had to be, by far, the most fun during this whole trip. After a long, hot day we closed the booth down and got the chance to hang out with everybody, seeing old familiar faces and putting names to new ones. We walked around to all the campsites and totally forgot we were at a show. It was just like an everyday weekend camping at the desert.

The Arizona Sand Fest provided a lot of activities and races for everybody to get involved. For those who missed out, be sure to look out for future dates of the next show. You can visit their website at www.azsandfest.com for more info.

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