NASCAR Winner Kyle Petty Still Riding for Victory Junction Camp

• The annual Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America begins its 26th edition April 30 in Phoenix.

• This year’s Ride will cover 1,500 miles in seven days, six of them actual travel days in Arizona and Utah.

• The most recent Ride generated $1.7 million and sent 128 children to camp.

After a frustrating two-year interruption brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic, the annual Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America begins its 26th edition April 30 in Phoenix. The annual motorcycle ride serves as a major fund-raiser for the Petty family’s Victory Junction Gang Camp near Randleman, N.C.

The upcoming KPCR is a somewhat abbreviated version of what was once a challenging endurance test. The first one in 1995 was truly “across America.” A group of perhaps 35 bikers began in Santa Clara, Cal. and rode across eight states, ending a week later near Charlotte, N.C. As many as 50 others joined up and dropped off along the way, but most in the core group of 35 (Editor note: Including Autoweek senior motorsports writer Al Pearce) were still there at the end of the grueling week.

Since then, other rides have started in California, Texas, Oregon, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Washington state, and upstate New York. They have ended in North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Missouri, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. Ride organizers often speak of going through – even if only briefly – all 48 of the lower states. Close, but not quite right: the Ride has gone through 46 of the 48, missing only Rhode Island and Delaware. (And there is uncertainty about Connecticut).

The most recent ride in 2019 was its longest. It began in Seattle, worked its way southward to New Mexico, turned eastward and crossed the southwest and Deep South en route to the west coast of Florida. By the time it ended in Key Largo, Fl. nine days after leaving Seattle, nobody associated with the Ride imagined it would be more than two years before they gathered again.