It's not every day a guy drives a few thousand miles while hauling a few thousand pounds of pumpkin to win the World Pumpkin Championship, but that's exactly what Travis Gienger did this past week.

Travis, a native of Anoka, Minnesota (which just happens to be the Halloween Capital of the World) carefully drove his enormous gourd all the way to Sacramento, California last week. Not only did he win the contest and the $16,450 in prize money, he also nearly broke the world record. The largest pumpkin ever recorded was Ludwigsburg, Germany back in 2016 at the Giant Pumpkin European Championship weighing in at 2,624 pounds. Travis' pumpkin weighed in at 2,350 pounds, only a few hundred less than the record.

What's also impressive is that after such a long journey from Minnesota to California, the pumpkin didn't have any cracks in it. According to the rules, if it had cracked in any way, Travis would have been disqualified from the competition and would have hauled his giant pumpkin across the country for nothing.

But good things do happen to those who wait. And in Travis' case, big things.

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