More MINI Madness
The last few days of MINI craziness in the mountains has included a summit ride to over 14000 feet, twisty rides through the "western dragon" (about 230 turns in 14 miles up and down the colorado mountains), dinners, prize raffles, activities, late-night ghost rides, and photo shoots.
More info to come...
MINI In The Mountains!
As many of you knjow, I am currently in Colorado racing around in my MINI as part of the MITM event. Here's a little background on the event:
" MINIs in the Mountains (MITM for short), aka Coopers at Copper Mountain, is a large gathering of MINI and Mini Cooper enthusiasts, located at Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado (9770 ft), about 75 miles west of Denver on Interstate 70. This event is planned as a ‘family vacation’ for attendees, some of whom will want to spend time before and after the MITM event enjoying even more of the fun summer outdoor activities the state is known for. Colorado is home to some of the most scenic and beautiful drives in the country, and this event will allow attendees to enjoy the Rocky Mountains, lakes, valleys, and ski resorts all over the central part of the state. In addition, attendees and their families can enjoy the many events and activities at the Copper Mountain Ski Resort, home base for this event. Come hit the road and enjoy the curves in your MINI or Mini. The roads in Colorado are twisty, curvy and high, some approaching 14,000 feet (paved) unlike anywhere else on the Continent!! "
My friend Sean and I made the long haul from Seattle all the way to Copper Mountain Colorado (about 50 miles west of Denver) in one day. Yes, that's right, a 19-hour endurance trek across the western part of the country. We managed to whittle that down to about 17 hours including all our stops. The drive was fine and the MINI was solid all the way.
We rolled into Copper Mountain around 3am and crashed for the night. The next morning we explored around a bit - Copper mountain is a pretty cool resort. For more info, check out: http://www.coppercolorado.com/
There are around 100+ MINI Coopers here at the resort, and around 180 people attending. It's an amazing amount of brightly-colored little cars all grouped together!
More to come...
The Trip: In a Nutshell
.. help, I'm trapped in a nutshell! nevermind...
As you may have noticed, all the posts from the trip are finally up on the blog along with the associated pictures. It took a while, but it's finally done!
I've put together another yahoo map, this time filled in with all the routes/places we actually ended up taking/seeing. If you're really bored you can look through this map and then even compare it to the map I posted before the trip...
Anyway, here's the GIANT URL:
Map Link
Home again...
Well, I'm finally back home. What a great trip, but boy am I tired.
The daily blogging didn't quite work out like I had hoped - the few places where I had staked out internet access didn't work and the last 2 days there wasn't any access at all. But I have the story and just need to start uploading it with the pictures. Expect backdated posts to start appearing in the next few days...
Thanks to everyone for their support on this trip!!
-Olen
Day 6: The drive home
Backdated: Monday, May 29, 2006
This was it, the final day of driving.
The morning run was Grand Coulee Dam. We didn't really have time for a guided tour, and being Memorial Day we didn't really feel like trying anyway. So we simply drove by, jumped out and took a few snaps, stood in awe for a bit, then jumped back in the car and were on our way.
After passing the Dam (Dam!) on highway 2 we soon connected up with highway 20 - the north cascades highway.
I had never been on highway 20 east of Winthrop, so it was nice to come from the other direction. It was a fun drive through the hills and valleys. When we arrived in Winthrop there was a full-on traffic jam! In Winthrop?! Yes, that's right, a 2-mile-per-hour, stop-and-go traffic jam through downtown Winthrop. Apparently it was one of the peak camping weekends (Memorial day, should've guessed...) and everyone was packing up to go home. Also, there was some kind of festivities in the area making everything really congested. So we just pulled over and strolled around Winthrop a bit and ordered a couple of gigantic waffle ice cream cones - YUM!
We finally made it out of Winthrop and that's when the REAL fun began. We were slowly working our way up to the first summit at an elevation of 5700 ft. There some fantastic corners and a good helping of passing lanes here and there. You should've seen the look on the other driver's faces as we passed them in the passing lane around hairpin corners like they were just standing still! Very fun.
We caught up with a couple of other "spirited drivers" and tagged along with them all the way to Lake Diablo. If you're from Washington and have never visited the north cascades and Lake Diablo area, you should - it's gorgeous. We stopped for a quick photo-op of the MINI on the bridge over the dam - that's the black roof peaking out.
Moving ever westward we stopped at a small town and had buffalo burgers - tasty!
Eventually we ventured into familiar territory again.. Concrete.. Sedro Wooley... and finally Mount Vernon. We stopped there at a local G.I. Joe's to pick up some much-needed cleaning supplies. Then it was southbound to home.
We stopped at my friend's parents house and visited there a bit and then headed to my parents' house where I was greeted by my parents, sister, and my recently-new brother-in-law. My parents comments were simply "my that's cute and fun looking" and "that reminds me of my uncle's car back in nineteen-fifty-....." (If you knew my parents you'd understand)
At my parents house we carefully peeled off the blue tape and revealed a spotless front-end underneath. The taped worked perfectly! We then proceeded to carefully wash the entire car. My long-time friend and neighbor came over to see the car and helped out with washing it. We were done in no time. Waxing the car, however, would have to wait. It was getting late and I had to be at work the next morning.
But that didn't stop us from going to see X-Men 3 while on the way back to Seattle. Man, when we got back in Seattle we were TIRED. But it was a GREAT trip!
Now I just need to figure out a license plate for the MINI... hhmmm.....
Day 5: part 2 What kind of Corvette is that?
Backdated: Sunday May 28, 2006
This afternoon we were in need of a break and happened to see a sign for the Deerlodge Auto and Old Prison museum. Finding that a can't-miss combo of attractions, we decided to pull off and go have a look.
When we got there it was exactly that: and old Montana prison
turned into a museum and next door / attached to it was the classic autos museum. It was only $6 to see the cars so we checked it out.
I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. They had every single year and decade represented straight from 1890 all the way to 1970. I have never seen so many Ford Model T's and A's in my life. And the collection of 60's muscle cars was impressive.
Of course my friend was drooling all over the Mach 1, but was also complaining that it was a '70 not a '69 (apparently his dream car).
I have to admit that the new Mustang does a good job of capturing the spirit of the old 60's model years (the best years, imho). I wonder if they've scratched an itch and made a Mach 1 version of the new 'stang yet?
If it were me, though, among the cars there I'd take the Cobra. The most ferocious and stylistically interesting car of the bunch, by far.
So we finished our photoshoot and decided to have a quick look around town. Deerlodge... wow. We stopped in one store that sold antique toys and other misc. junk and the lady at the counter was either about to fall asleep or stoned out of her mind. We asked a few questions and she gave the weirdest answers...
The next store wasn't any better. We checked out a "gold digger's supply store" and looked at all the sifting pans and other equipment. I asked the guy about how metal detectors worked and before I knew it I was listening to a whole story about him out huntin' for gold with his metal detector and all the tricks of the trade. He was beaming through his 2 missing front teeth. Although not my cup of tea, he actually was a pretty cool guy and I have to respect him for running that store and making a living out of his hobby. And he's happy with it, too.
Having had our fill of Deerlodge we headed out of town and back on to the slab...
It was around Missoula that we had planned to finally get back off of I-90. We cut over to 200 - a much more fun, twisty, and traffic-free route. We took highway 200 all the way to and through Idaho (the drive along the Clark Fork river was gorgeous) and finally made our way into Washington and on to highway 2 down towards Spokane. The rest of this evening was fairly uneventful - just driving on highway 2 straight on through until we arrived here in Wilbur, WA (yeah, I don't know where it is, either) where we stopped for the night (the one hotel *not* booked on Expedia - can you guess why?).
Day 5: Montana and Idaho
Backdated: Sunday, May 28, 2006
This morning we woke and had our free continental breakfast and then headed into downtown Bozeman to check out the "sites" - namely, the dinosaur museum. It's called "Museum of the Rockies" and it's pretty cool - or at least I remembered it being really cool when I was last there as a kid.
It was pretty fun, although there was a big section under construction to get ready for the big summer "museum season" coming up (is there such a thing in Montana?).
The big dinosaur bones were definitely fun to see.
We headed out of Bozeman around 11am and ran into our first car trouble - a little "ding" and a yellow tire hazard light came on the dash. I immediately got out and checked the tires - they all looked fine. But it was one of those situations like
"do they look ok to you? i don't know, do they look ok to you? I don't know, they're run-flats, what're they supposed to look like? I don't know, they look ok to me..."
It was all rather confusing. So we pulled into a gas station and checked the pressure - all the tires were down anywhere from 5-10 lbs. So we filled up with air, hit the reset button, and drove off. It was around this time that I was getting concerned because after "reseting" the light was still on. I didn't realize that it doesn't go off again until you power cycle the car (reset, drive to calibrate, shut off motor, start motor, light cleared). Confusing, but once I figured it out I felt better about my car's ability for self diagnosis. Pretty cool!
Back on I-90 (not many other choices around this area) about 2 hours into the drive we saw ahead some dark clouds "falling" out of the sky (heavy rain). We got closer and closer and suddenly, accompanied by a "ding" to denote icy conditions we hit a MASSIVE hail storm. I mean MASSIVE! We (along with everybody else on the freeway) were contentedly cruising along at 70+ mph in clear/dry/warm conditions when all of a sudden - WOOSH! - we were driving on top of about 2 inches of hail accumulation! It was just white EVERYWHERE! My copilot was driving at the time and did a good job of carefully slowing down the car using mostly engine breaking and even with that we were sliding back and forth in our lane. We drove for about 5 minutes through the heavy (but luckily small) hail and then as quickly as it came it was gone. Just like that! We were both so startled that I didn't even think to try and take picture. After it was gone I grabbed a camera and snapped a shot of the hail accumulation just left over on the windshield!
Day 4 Part 2: Yellowstone
Backdated Saturday, 5/27/06
With every 20 miles of great twisty road in the middle of nowhere comes the ubiquitous 5 miles of nasty, torn-up, loose gravel road construction. Ugh. Luckily the "bluebra" did its job and kept the front-end nice and clean and rockchip-free.
The road construction became worse as we neared Yellowstone, but luckily only lasted for a few miles here and there (although at 15 miles an hour, 2 miles seems to last forever!)
Once inside the park we got our first glimpse of the buffalo.. just kind of sitting there minding his own business.
Yellowstone really is a fantastic place and it was a shame we only had this afternoon/evening to explore it. I've been there before many times, so I know what I'm missing.
Our adventure through Yellowstone was greatly reduced by closed roads - it was snowing on the higher elevations and the park rangers had closed some of the roads thus cutting our tour de yellowstone a little short. We did manage to see a couple waterfalls, a petrified tree, and the amazing mammoth hot springs.
Leaving the park, the sunset over the mountains was gorgeous - a collection of blue and pink peaks shrouded in mist. We flew on by and made our way to Bozeman for the night. It's been a very long but adventuresome day of driving, and we need some rest.
Day 4: Let the FUN begin!
Backdated: Saturday, May 27, 2006
After a MUCH needed rest in Buffalo, Wyoming, we hit ventured westward on some of craziest, twistiest roads in America - Highway 14 and 16 and their alternate routes...
For an example, check out this giant map bilboard we passed along the way! This road was crazy - and I even let my friend/copilot drive for a good part of it. :-)
Once or twice we stopped to stretch and I propped the bonnet to give the engine a nice cool-down. In the picture you can see some of the snow accumulation at the higher elevations (the cold wind cooled down the engine very quickly).
At the end it was a big downhill coming down into a huge open valley. After all those curves it just opened up into a wide flat straight roads. Cruising along we hardly even noticed that MINI just naturally wanted to drift towards 90+ mph. At one point my friend took it up to *** mph. ;-)
After a short pause in Cody, Wyoming (home of Buffalo Bill) we again took another "alternate" route up towards Yellowstone - the "Chief Joseph Scenic Byway" Just more and more twisty fun roads.
Day 3 Part 2: More Thunderstorms!
Backdated Friday, May 26th, 2006
So we finally headed up and out of the Mount Rushmore area and stopped off in Deadwood (yes, "the" Deadwood) for a little country cookin' at a local bar/grill/casino. I had some steak and potatoes stroganoff - not the best, but not bad either.
The sun was starting to set but we still wanted to make it to Devil's Tower, so we hopped back in the MINI and sped off towards Wyoming. We could see rainstorms / thunderstorms off in the distance...
It was about 15 miles past the Wyoming border that we hit that magical number...
The time had come... the break-in complete... the wait over...
It was *SO* tempting to just let it rip 100%, but I was gentle with her and continued the rev up and down procedure, but now I was venturing into 6000 rpm land... WOW.
And the sky grew darker and darker with the sun setting and the thunderstorm nearing. Devil's Tower was nowhere in site, but we knew it was close!
We found the turn-off and kept going. By now it was almost completely dark and the thunderstorm was almost directly ahead - right over where the road was taking us! It was a crazy drive through random rain showers and dodging Bambi and all 72 of his relatives.
We finally got close enough to see it - looming over the twilight horizon. We pulled off and took a few shots. The view was so amazing... unfortunately none of the shots I took could capture the flashing lightning in the background. It was pretty spectacular. It was around this time that the name "Thor" really started to ring true - at least according to my co-pilot...
Day 3: Wall Drug and more!
Backdated: Friday, May 26, 2006
No trip through South Dakota would be complete without a trip to Wall Drug, of course!
Anyway...
We finaly made it to Rapid City, SD just oustide of Mount Rushmore around 10am - right on schedule (despite getting out of Chicago about 4 hours late the day before!).
We had a good solid breakfast/brunch at a Perkins in Rapid City and asked our (obviously new) waiter about Mount Rushmore and specifically about "extra twisty roads" in the area. He was very excited about the MINI and asked if he could go along for the ride :-)
When we came out there was a Dodge Challenger Daytona parked next to the MINI. A pretty stark contrast between the two. That's a lot of yellow!
We put in a good tip for our waiter, hopped in the car, and headed south on 16 towards Mount Rushmore.
The weather was perfectly hot and sunny - although a bit humid (more on that later...)
We stopped in at Mount Rushmore, a "free" National Monument with $8 parking and then realized afterwards that there was a great turn-off view (for free) about 300 yards up the road from the visitor's center. Oh well. We learned our lesson and when they wanted to charge us $20 to see Crazy Horse we just snapped a shot and drove off.
We then made our way down to the Jewel Caves National Monument and went for a tour. Remember the warm and sunny (and humid) part? When we came out of the cave tour an hour later it was hailing / pouring rain and lightning was lighting up the sky. Again! Crazy!! We plowed through the torrential downpour and up into the hills around Mount Rushmore.
This was where the REAL twisties started happening. Thankfully, the rain subsided and we were left with damp twisty roads - so much fun. The road was 16 alternate (apparently around this area "alternate" means twisty and fun!) and contained the "pigtail bridges" along with carefully crafted tunnels with perfect views of the four presidents. An amazing road!
This was the first time I really started to get into what this car could do. At one point there was an empty parking lot shaped like a big circle with sort of an upper and lower half. I pulled off on to that and, even in the extremely wet conditions, no matter how hard I pulled through the corners even through the off-camber elevation drop I couldn't get the MINI to pull loose (even with DSC off)! It just stuck to the road like glue. It was amazing!
Day 2.5 - the all-nighter
backdated: 5/26/06
Nothing much to report... lots of driving.. all-night long... Unfortunately I've been too excited to sleep at all so now this morning I'm a sleep-deprived wreck. Oh well, that's what tonight's hotel stay is for.
Despite the long straight drive, we attempted to vary the revs and speed of the engine as much as possible, so as to properly break-in the engine. Being late at night the engine stayed nice and cool, too, as I checked it regularly whenver we stopped. Aside from the terrible roads here and there, it was a smooth ride.
As far as the sights.. well.. it was dark. But being south Minnesota and the middle of South Dakota, I doubt there was much that we missed.
Now on our way to Mount Rushmore!
Pictures: late-night dinner at Popeyes (nothin better!) and dawn somewhere around mid-South Dakota.
Day 2: Chicago Style
Backdated: Thursday, May 25, 2006
This morning we forced ourselves out of bed and headed into the big city. Here's a nice pic of the car all safe and sound in the parking garage under Millenium Park.
We toured around Chicago - Millenium Park, Sears tower, downtown, Adler Planetarium, etc, etc... Also, apparently in Chicago all the public service workers get Segways!
The view from the Sears tower was the most revealing about Illinois - this place is FLAT!! Coming from Washington, it was weird to look out from the viewing deck and see the totally flat horizon in all directions - with freeways stretching out from the city seemingly to infinity. Very weird!
In true sight-seeing fashion, we managed to get utterly turned around and lost as we attempted to navigate our way out of the city. Thanks to a couple firefighters at a local firestation, we got directions and waded our way through Chicago rush hour traffic out towards Wisconsin.
And thus we began our all-night drive across the midwest...
2am local time... outlook: FUN
What a great day!
the flight was good , the car fantastic, and the MINI meetup a blast!
Watch out for that CRAAZY Chicago thunderstorm, though!!
Pics and more details to follow soon. For now.. sleep...
Day 1: Part 2
Backdated: 5/24/06
After dinner at Portillos we all went for a drive over to a local mall / parking garage for a group photo. Unfortunately, the party-crashing security guard kicked us out before we could finish setting up for the full shoot, so we were forced to go elsewhere. Driving up and down the corkscrew parking garage was fun, though - Italian Job style.
So we just went to another parking garage for pictures. Meanwhile we could feel the air turning humid and electric...
Just as we finished up a wall of rain and lightning moved across us and nearly ruined our cars and the ride for the night. But a few of us continued on and drove into the city and out into the countryside for my innaugural drive.
Aside from sporatic extreme rain and an accident on the side of the road (not a MINI), the night went on without any problems. It was a great day and the car was wonderful.
Day 1
backdated: 5/24/06
Our plane arrived in Chicago about 15 minutes late, but being seated in the very last row of the plane (31 of 31) it took a while for us to disembark. A service agent from the dealership was there and waiting for us in a slick new 3-series BMW (MINI is made by BMW in case you didn’t know). That was a pretty crazy ride through traffic and tolls on our way to the dealership.
When we pulled in there was my car all washed and waxed and ready to go! I went through the usual hour or two of paperwork and such and then had a comprehensive walk-through of all the details of the car by my MA (“motoring assistant” = dealer). Having already read the manual online (and spent much time in them at the local dealer in Fife) I knew a lot of it already but was still excited to see it all in person and also learn a couple new tricks (like how to operate the sunroof and jumpstart the car, etc).
While finishing up at the dealership, 2 of the CMMC (Chicago MINI Motoring Club) guys showed up – I got a nice set of magnetic rear boot stripes from one and the other led me for a short test drive to check everything was in proper order on the car.
After everything was checked out and ready to go, we headed over to Portillos for some dinner, and one-by-one the fellow MINI owners arrived…
For Display Purposes Only (FPO)
For comparison, here's what MINIUSA says my new MINI will look like:
For comparison:
MINI Cooper S "stock" configuration:
- 1.6 L 16-valve inline-4 (yes, that's right, only 1.6 liters!)
- Intercooled Supercharger
- 168bhp / 162lbfts torque
- 6750rpm redline
- top speed electronically governed to 135mph
- sport suspension
- sport exhaust
- 6-speed manual getrag transmission
- 17" alloy rims (upgrade)
My current ride
Just so there can be an A/B comparison later on, here's my current ride:
Yeah, baby!
1990 Chevrolet Cavalier
2-door coupe
2.2 L inline-4 pumping out 95hp / 120lbft torque! (or, at least it did 16 years ago!)
(hey, there's a K&N filter in there that's good for at least 3hp!)
3-speed Automatic w/ auto overdrive
13" stock steel rims w/ some sweet hub caps
Crazy URL
So for those with a penchant for extreme mapping, check out my entire trip mapped out using Yahoo's new maps beta (warning, this is a 24-point route that will take about 3 minutes for yahoo to calculate out.
Map LinkEnjoy
Ready, set... GO!
Welcome to my MOblog ("motoring blog" ;-) for my exciting adventure back home with a brand new MINI Cooper S.
I'm all set and ready to. Tomorrow morning I fly out to Chicago, Illinois to pick up the car.
This is all a very exciting and yet nervous time for me. This is my first NEW car, and my first personal big car purchase (the biggest check I've ever written!). It will replace my long-time companion of 9 years - my 1990 Chevrolet Cavalier Coupe - the car I've been driving ever since I got my license. It will be sad to see it go, but boy have I been a waiting a long time for this!
Things to look forward to on this blog:
- LOTS of pictures of the new car
- Chicago MINI Motoring Club sightings
- pictures and descriptions of the sights - Chicago, Mount Rushmore, Devil's Tower, etc...
- the craziest twistiest roads of Wyoming
- Pictures of the brand new car covered in painter's tape, bugs, and dirt. woohoo!
More to come!
The morning run was Grand Coulee Dam. We didn't really have time for a guided tour, and being Memorial Day we didn't really feel like trying anyway. So we simply drove by, jumped out and took a few snaps, stood in awe for a bit, then jumped back in the car and were on our way.
We caught up with a couple of other "spirited drivers" and tagged along with them all the way to Lake Diablo. If you're from Washington and have never visited the north cascades and Lake Diablo area, you should - it's gorgeous. We stopped for a quick photo-op of the MINI on the bridge over the dam - that's the black roof peaking out.
We stopped at my friend's parents house and visited there a bit and then headed to my parents' house where I was greeted by my parents, sister, and my recently-new brother-in-law. My parents comments were simply "my that's cute and fun looking" and "that reminds me of my uncle's car back in nineteen-fifty-....." (If you knew my parents you'd understand)
This afternoon we were in need of a break and happened to see a sign for the Deerlodge Auto and Old Prison museum. Finding that a can't-miss combo of attractions, we decided to pull off and go have a look.
turned into a museum and next door / attached to it was the classic autos museum. It was only $6 to see the cars so we checked it out.
Of course my friend was drooling all over the Mach 1, but was also complaining that it was a '70 not a '69 (apparently his dream car).
This morning we woke and had our free continental breakfast and then headed into downtown Bozeman to check out the "sites" - namely, the dinosaur museum. It's called "Museum of the Rockies" and it's pretty cool - or at least I remembered it being really cool when I was last there as a kid.
Back on I-90 (not many other choices around this area) about 2 hours into the drive we saw ahead some dark clouds "falling" out of the sky (heavy rain). We got closer and closer and suddenly, accompanied by a "ding" to denote icy conditions we hit a MASSIVE hail storm. I mean MASSIVE! We (along with everybody else on the freeway) were contentedly cruising along at 70+ mph in clear/dry/warm conditions when all of a sudden - WOOSH! - we were driving on top of about 2 inches of hail accumulation! It was just white EVERYWHERE! My copilot was driving at the time and did a good job of carefully slowing down the car using mostly engine breaking and even with that we were sliding back and forth in our lane. We drove for about 5 minutes through the heavy (but luckily small) hail and then as quickly as it came it was gone. Just like that! We were both so startled that I didn't even think to try and take picture. After it was gone I grabbed a camera and snapped a shot of the hail accumulation just left over on the windshield!
The road construction became worse as we neared Yellowstone, but luckily only lasted for a few miles here and there (although at 15 miles an hour, 2 miles seems to last forever!)
Yellowstone really is a fantastic place and it was a shame we only had this afternoon/evening to explore it. I've been there before many times, so I know what I'm missing.
Leaving the park, the sunset over the mountains was gorgeous - a collection of blue and pink peaks shrouded in mist. We flew on by and made our way to Bozeman for the night. It's been a very long but adventuresome day of driving, and we need some rest.
Once or twice we stopped to stretch and I propped the bonnet to give the engine a nice cool-down. In the picture you can see some of the snow accumulation at the higher elevations (the cold wind cooled down the engine very quickly).
At the end it was a big downhill coming down into a huge open valley. After all those curves it just opened up into a wide flat straight roads. Cruising along we hardly even noticed that MINI just naturally wanted to drift towards 90+ mph. At one point my friend took it up to *** mph. ;-)
The sun was starting to set but we still wanted to make it to Devil's Tower, so we hopped back in the MINI and sped off towards Wyoming. We could see rainstorms / thunderstorms off in the distance...
We found the turn-off and kept going. By now it was almost completely dark and the thunderstorm was almost directly ahead - right over where the road was taking us! It was a crazy drive through random rain showers and dodging Bambi and all 72 of his relatives.
We stopped in at Mount Rushmore, a "free" National Monument with $8 parking and then realized afterwards that there was a great turn-off view (for free) about 300 yards up the road from the visitor's center. Oh well. We learned our lesson and when they wanted to charge us $20 to see Crazy Horse we just snapped a shot and drove off.
We then made our way down to the Jewel Caves National Monument and went for a tour. Remember the warm and sunny (and humid) part? When we came out of the cave tour an hour later it was hailing / pouring rain and lightning was lighting up the sky. Again! Crazy!! We plowed through the torrential downpour and up into the hills around Mount Rushmore.
This was where the REAL twisties started happening. Thankfully, the rain subsided and we were left with damp twisty roads - so much fun. The road was 16 alternate (apparently around this area "alternate" means twisty and fun!) and contained the "pigtail bridges" along with carefully crafted tunnels with perfect views of the four presidents. An amazing road!
This was the first time I really started to get into what this car could do. At one point there was an empty parking lot shaped like a big circle with sort of an upper and lower half. I pulled off on to that and, even in the extremely wet conditions, no matter how hard I pulled through the corners even through the off-camber elevation drop I couldn't get the MINI to pull loose (even with DSC off)! It just stuck to the road like glue. It was amazing!
Yeah, baby!
