The first U.S, Nationals that my wife and I attended in person was in Spokane in January 2007 and we fell in love with all the ladies, especially Mirai appearing at her first Nats as a junior. The venue was great with the practice rink at the Convention Center being walking distance from the main rink. We spent most of our time running from rink to rink to watch the practices of all the ladies novices, juniors, and seniors. We were seated next to someone at one of the practices who was waxing enthusiastic about how wonderful a place Oberstdorf, Gemany, was and what a great place it was to go to watch skating.
When Mirai won juniors and was selected with Caroling Zhang and Ashley Wagner to go to Junior Worlds in Oberstdorf, my wife and I debated during most of our 2 day drive back home from Spokane whether we ought to try to go to Junior Worlds. I stayed up all night the day we got home searching on the internet for information about places to stay and how to get tickets. After talking to my wife the next day we decided to go because we were not sure whether we would ever get to see Mirai skate again. Little did we know at that time that Mirai was going to have such a long and succesful career.
So a couple of weeks later we were in Oberstdorf watching something like 56 ladies from about 42 different countries and feeling like we were in a heavenly place. We had a holiday apartment that was just across the creek from the rink and took us under 5 minutes to walk to the rink because we had to walk about 50 yards out of our way to get to the bridge.
Since Mirai had no international ranking she ended up near the start of the 6 or 7 hour long run of the short programs. If you watch a video of Mirai's short you will see that there were very few spectators for the early flights. We were a couple of the few that were there and had a great day watching all the lovely girls from so many different countries. If anyone ever has a chance to go to the Nebelhorn I would recommend it highly.
My friend the Coyote recommended that I post one of my early skating photos of Mirai here so below you will see the three medalists of the 2007 Junior Worlds (when they were all much younger): Mirai Nagasu, Caroline Zhang, and Ashley Wagner.
View attachment 3264