Ever have that dream that you wake up hours late for your end-of-the-year finals? Or maybe late to a flight or an important meeting? Well, we had the same sort of thing this morning. Shooting out of bed in the middle of the night, we were roused with the sickening feeling that somehow, someway, we were going to miss the entire Mopars at the Strip weekend.

It pays to read your calendar. Realizing that we had missed the group from Glendora Dodge had left the day before, we scrambled to get on the road in our trusty look-at-me-red Magnum R/T. We knew we were in the right place when we parked next to a Lemon Lime '70 HEMI 'Cuda 4-speed.

Calming ourselves back down, we drifted back to sleep realizing that there was no way we’d sleep through a whole weekend…

Unfortunately, that still, quiet voice in the back of our minds kept nagging. Something was wrong. We were missing something.

Preparing to load up our ’07 Magnum R/T with all our camera equipment, dufflebags of clean clothes and a wallet full of cash (just in case we spotted something we simply couldn’t live without for our project Killer Kong ’69 Charger), the sickening feeling continued to swell in our gut. What was it that we weren’t getting?

The plan was simple, drive up to Glendora Dodge where we’d meet with the rest of the caravan leaving Southern California and follow along in a chain all the way to the Las Vegas Speedway and this year’s Mopars at The Strip gathering.

Flipping through our itinerary, it suddenly all made sense: today was Friday. The group leaving Glendora Dodge left Thursday. We’re a day behind. Wow, we need to get on the road like, now.

Sure, everybody loves a good ol' fashioned gasser, but how about this T7 Bronze Plymouth Satellite with velocity stacks and some seriously "high jacker" suspension? No doubt about it!

Thankfully, especially for a Friday, the traffic was pretty forgiving. We made short time crossing state line, stopping for a quick burrito, and pulling into the parking lot a few hours later.

The skies were blue, spotted with scattered white clouds, but not the gray drizzle that weathermen were insisting was on tap.

Looking around, the show n’ shine wasn’t nearly as jam packed as previous years, but we still have two more days of MATS to go. Trust me, the people will come.

Perusing the vendor alley we were immediately besieged by the Speedfactory crew. If late model third generations are your cup of tea (which if you’re reading this, chances are pretty likely), these guys are your kind of people.

There's no shortage of classic muscle here at the Mopars at The Strip, and there's truly no short supply of Gen III-powered HEMI Mopars like this wicked 6.1L HEMI '69 Charger 500.

Speedfactory’s brilliantly HEMI Orange LX-based Charger has already made waves with its 9.45-second quarter mile. Employing a Vortech supercharger, a lot of stroke and ZERO nitrous, the factory block Charger was only one of their toys on hand.

New to the corral was their black-on-black SRT8 Challenger touting an all-aluminum 426cui Gen III powerhouse. Currently untested, coming home with a single-digit time slip with the Challenger was – above all – Speedfactory’s sole goal for the weekend. We’ll have to come back and see.

If that wasn’t enough to scratch your elephant motor itch, we ran into August Cederstrand of Cederstrand Racing Engines. August, who is a regular at the Mopar Muscle Engine Challenge, has proven his prowess at building the King Kong plant.

Only a short ways away sat INDY Cylinder Heads’ massive display of available powertrains, ranging from a 380-horsepower LA-block 360 all the way to a gnarly 770-horsepower 572 HEMI.

Of course, in between there were several Gen III HEMIs cranking a wide range of outputs to meet any Mopar-lovers insatiable lust for horsepower.

"It's got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas. What do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?"

The usual suspects were all in fine form, including Chrysler exhaust artisans, TTI Exhaust, Mancini Racing, Glendora Dodge, Flowmaster, COMP, Edelbrock, Hotchkis, Paxton, TCI, Classic Industries and Vortech. Together with a several-rows-deep swap meet section meant, if you are in the market to build a project Mopar, you’re in good company.

Walking the rows of classics and contemporary Mopar muscle, we were immediately impressed with how many late-model HEMI swaps we counted. Nestled between the shock towers of plenty of A-, B-, and E-Body Mopars were 5.7L, 6.1L, 6.4L (i.e. 392) and even 426 and bigger Gen III HEMIs.

Now that so many aftermarket companies are able to provide compatible go-fast goods for these motors, it was only a matter of time before these plants appeared in droves of classic Dodges and Plymouths.

Since the festivities had only kicked off a few hours earlier, the cars continued to pour in, hinting at a far larger crowd than what was already present.

Those wanting to click off a couple hot passes were happily enjoying the scheduled time trials. Road Runners, Dusters, Barracudas, Darts, Chargers, GTXs and Coronets blasted down the 1320 time and time again.

Tomorrow holds the promise of much more drag racing, more show cars, and more amazing finds. Make sure to tune in tomorrow and check out our daily event recaps all weekend long!

This pair of '70 'Birds showed just how much of a performance brand the now-defunct Plymouth brand truly was. Kids, when your dads start talking about Plymouths, don't think of minivans and some rebadged Neons. Think these!