On Sunday, my family and some friends made our annual pilgrimage to Michigan International Speedway to see a NASCAR race.

We usually go to one or two professional or college sports events a year; and in recent years, upon my husband’s request, this has included a NASCAR Sprint Cup race. Our tailgate crowd includes friends from Ohio whom we see only once a year.

Now, we’ve always done our NASCAR tailgate party on a budget. The routine we worked out is:

• Out-of-towners arrive Saturday and stay overnight at our house.
• We each bring whatever grub that we are contributing or have purchased for the cause, and make a Saturday night shopping trip to fill in the details.
• Sunday breakfast is cooked at home (one of the guys brought biscuits and gravy that he prepped the day before), although we do make a coffee stop on the way.
• Put as much stuff as possible into as few vehicles as possible. Currently, we’re fitting six people and gear into one minivan.
• Lunch is tailgate cookout in the parking lot.
• Do some shopping at the licensed haulers and the “unofficial” vendor area in another parking lot.
• Bring our own beverages into the track (Michigan Speedway is generous with fans about this policy but personal coolers and bags have to meet size specifications.)
• Dinner is tailgate cookout at the track while we wait for the traffic to clear.
• Head back to Monroe, clear out the vehicle and everybody go home.

We left about 6 a.m., and got home around 10 p.m. The Detroit Free Press had arrived, but not The Monroe Evening News, when we headed out the door. I pulled out the newspaper ads to leave at home, took the news sections in the car, and I was reading a newspaper in the parking lot (my daughter has a picture to prove it …).

Now, a lot of MIS fans have traditionally made an entire weekend out of the event – staying overnight in campers, getting tickets to the “minor league” division race (currently known as the Nationwide Series) on Saturday, and bringing enough food and adult beverages to last quite awhile.

So one of the stories that I brought to my tailgate co-horts’ attention in the Free Press yesterday was Economic woes keep fans away from track.

A snippet:

Nearly everyone, it seemed, had left someone behind. A brother. A daughter. An out-of-work neighbor. There were stories of friends who couldn’t afford the $4-a-gallon gas, the tickets or the campground fees.

“I know of four guys alone in Lapeer who couldn’t make it,” said Don Klein, 55, a fan from Redford who has been coming to MIS for more than two decades. “And they had tickets.”

They chose to eat them. Gas and camping fees and the paraphernalia of partying simply cost too much.

The consensus from our group is that there were some empty seats, although not in the section where our seats were. There also were fewer licensed merchandise haulers, which led to long lines at some of the popular drivers’ vending areas. The parking lot emptied faster than in years past, but MIS officials have honestly been working on that problem.

If it wasn’t for the fact that even so-so seats have to be purchased months in advance, we might have seen even fewer people in the stands.