In the Field: Elliott Sadler

I'm in the middle of a Fourth of July family outing to Nags Head, N.C.

We've tried for a number of years to get our whole family together and go to Nags Head for July 4, so my mom and dad, my sister and my brother, his wife, three girls and I are all there.

We always try to go there for a couple or three days. It doesn't always work, but we spend so much time away from each other -- with me racing and now with Hermie doing his media work -- that that was always my mom's one wish: that we always would get together and spend a week somewhere.

It always happens to be Nags Head, when we are able to get together and do it. And I was really looking forward to it.

We all pile into one house there. You've got to understand -- we've been going to Nags Head on vacation forever. My family's been going there since way before I was born and I've been going there since I was a kid -- what seems like forever.

We've lived in three different houses since I've been there. The one we live in now is 10 years old and it's big enough that we all can stay in the same place. But it's kind of cozy, too.

It's pretty neat that we can all get up in the morning and eat breakfast together and hang out by the pool and all. It's pretty special.

It's going to be a short week for me, because I'll fly to Daytona Beach on Thursday.

We planned to go somewhere to watch the fireworks on the Fourth. It's pretty neat -- you go to Nags Head and watch the fireworks that come up on the other side of the sound, in Manteo.

It's really neat and that's kind of what everybody does there. It's a great place to go and Nags Head has always been somewhere that's a lot of fun for our family.

With everything that's going on this year; and right around now, it makes it even more special to be able to do this family getaway.

I think fans lose track of just how much time we, as drivers, actually spend away from home, and away from our families. So any time at all that we can spend together is very well cherished.

I've been trying to get home a lot this year, to spend time with my family and Amanda, my girlfriend, and things like that.

So any time we can get together like this, and go and spend time at the beach and things like that, it's a big deal. My nieces love it down there -- going to the beach and they love playing in the ocean.

They don't get into burying me in the sand or anything like that -- but I'm kind of like the human jungle gym. That's kind of what we do, and it's fun -- where I can be me and act up and act crazy and have fun and throw them around.

The vacation is more for them. We enjoy going and having fun, but the vacation definitely centers on my nieces.

They've got a lot of good golf courses there, so when we go we try to play.

My dad used to have a fishing boat and we'd go out to the Gulf Stream and go fishing a lot -- and I miss that. But it's so expensive to go out only a few times, and we work so much we can't go out much any more.

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I'm particularly thankful to do the Nags Head trip with the family, because even though Daytona is on July 4 weekend, this trip it's pretty much going to be racing and out of there.

If I play golf in Nags Head, that will have to take care of my golfing fix this week. Usually at Daytona we're pretty busy and this year's no exception, especially since we've made a personnel switch, with Scott McDougall stepping up to crew chief of my Dodge Dealers/UAW Charger and Josh Browne stepping back to engineering. (read more)

I'm in on Thursday, then we practice that afternoon and qualify Thursday night. I've got a real busy Friday and then I don't want to do anything to drain myself and prevent me and my Evernham Motorsports team from having a great race Saturday night -- so usually I keep my sticks at home when I go to Daytona and I worry about them when I get back.

At Nags Head, there's a place called Duck Woods Country Club that's very nice -- and my favorite place to play is called the Pointe Golf Club, which is a beautiful place right before you go across the sound to Kitty Hawk.

The reason I like it is because it's wide open -- it gives me a lot of room to work. If you hit into one fairway, you can hit right back across to the other one.

There's another course called Nags Head Golf Links, but that's just way too hard for me. I like to go somewhere where I can shoot a good score and have fun.

See, this is a vacation place -- Nags Head. Why would you build such a hard golf course there? If people are on vacation to go play golf, they want to shoot good.

If I owned a golf course at a vacation place, it would be the easiest course in the world, because if you're on vacation you'd rather shoot 75 than 95, do you think?

It's not much fun shooting that bad, so we'd rather go someplace where you can shoot and have fun.

Elliott Sadler, now in his ninth full season in the Cup Series, shares weekly with NASCAR.COM readers life on the road through staff writer Dave Rodman.