AP Photo/John Kekis Former NASCAR driver Kyle Petty, right, appears at a charity motorcycle ride in Albany, N.Y., Saturday, May 5, 2018. Petty leads the ride every year in early May to raise funds for his Victory Junction Gang Camp for children with life-threatening illnesses.

MILL HALL — Back in 1995, discussions between then-NASCAR driver Kyle Petty and a few racing friends led to the formation of a crazy idea. The plan at the time was to ride motorcycles across the United States, from California all the way back home to North Carolina. There was no deeper meaning, no ulterior motive.

Just the ride.

Although outside reactions were negative, a vast array of different ways to call Petty and the group insane, they were unknowingly onto something great and quickly came up with a solution to see it through.

“They told us we were crazy and that if we did it, they would fire us from our jobs, and we’d lose all this stuff,” laughed Petty while reminiscing. “So, we talked about it a little bit longer and then we said, ‘Hey, we’ve got an idea. We’ll do it for charity.'”

Thus, the Kyle Petty Charity Ride across America came to be.

Now, 30 years in the making and having experienced constant growth and occasional adjustments, the ride will be making its way through Central Pennsylvania for the very first time this week. Its second-to-last stop is set for Bedford on Thursday and on the same day, the group will be stopping at Mill Hall’s Flying J fuel station for a fan event at 11 a.m.

“We’ve gone over on the Philadelphia side, and we’ve come through over on the Pittsburgh side,” explained Petty. “This year, we’re kind of going right down the middle of it.”

Alongside Petty, other celebrity riders include NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty and Hershel McGriff, former NASCAR drivers Max Papis, Ken Schrader and Kenny Wallace, legendary running back Herschel Walker, TV personalities Rick Allen and Rutledge Wood and more.

In its early years, the ride consisted of the exact plan that was discussed in its inception, with the addition of the group stopping at children’s hospitals along the way. The path itself would remain mostly the same for almost two decades, but the ride and its mission took on a different meaning following the tragic death of Petty’s son, Adam, in 2000.

In Adam’s honor, Petty and his family founded Victory Function, a member of Paul Newman’s SeriousFun network of camps that provides children with serious illnesses and chronic medical conditions. With the help of other NASCAR greats like Tony Stewart, Michael Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Jeff Gordon, it would officially get off the ground in 2004.

The camp and ride would go hand-in-hand from there, as the latter’s primary function became raising money for the kids to have the best camping experience possible.

“I tell them, ‘It’s not our camp. It belongs to the kids.’ We’re just the stewards and caretakers of the camp,” said Petty. “Our responsibility is to do a motorcycle ride and raise money so the kids can go to camp. It is a huge honor to be in that position to do it.”

Cut to 2025, and the Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America enters its 29th rendition, having raised over $22 million for Victory Function. Over 100,000 kids have been impacted, and the ride itself has grown from a 30-member ride to one featuring about 250, from riders, to support people, to doctors, police and travel arrangers.

“It’s more like a traveling circus than it is a motorcycle race in a lot of ways,” laughed Petty when discussing all its moving parts. “It’s been crazy. It was crazy before COVID and was trending up in that way, and COVID has not slowed us down at all. I think after COVID, more people were ready to ride and excited about riding.”

Apart from 2020, the ride has run every year since 1995, taking the West to East coast path for about two decades before seeing more variance in recent ventures.

From a Southwest ride spanning Arizona, Nevada and Utah to its latest trek through the Northeast, it’s beginning to check off more and more boxes when it comes to visiting every area in the country.

It’s an event that brings riders, NASCAR fans and people uninvolved with the sport together for one joint cause. While it was initially all about the ride, Petty’s interactions with the kids and fans have taken centerstage, becoming his favorite aspect of the entire experience.

“It’s almost like having a college reunion or class reunion or high school reunion, whatever it may be. It’s like having a bunch of friends get together once a year and you just pick up the conversation where it left off,” expressed Petty. “But the best part about the ride, and we talk about it every year when it’s over with, are the people that we meet along the way.”

Where the Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America will end up in the coming years is currently a mystery, a choice Petty and those involved leave up to the fans. But one thing is certain. It’s going to be prevalent for many years to come, creating memories and impacting kids every mile of the way.