MINIs on the Dragon 2014

Well, we did drive to The Dragon this year since we had to be in that part of the USA anyway. 

Long trip....  Many Smokey Bears along the way but none of them thought we were worth their time when we stayed at no more than 5 mph over the posted limits as registered by our Garmin GPS.  Even at 80 or 85 mph when we blew past them in the center median doing 5 over!!  Yes, there are places that are posted 75 and 80 mph :-)

The fire across the highway somewhere in Kansas was the scariest part of the trip.  80 mph traffic headed into the smoke!!!  I was trying to slow down as rapidly as possible without the cars and big rigs hitting me from behind and at about 30 mph the car in front of me disappeared and all I could see were his tail lights with a 4 foot separation from hood to boot!!!  He was weaving to avoid, or follow, the mess in front of him.  When we emerged from the smoke doing about 10 mph there were 2 smashed, rolled big rigs on the right shoulder, another one smashed in the center median and about 6 cars all mangled that we had just weaved through!!  Whew!  Was that ever scary, and there was one lone trooper desperately trying to direct traffic but he was on the wrong side of the smoke; no flares or anything warning of what was over the rise approaching the smoke that had appeared to be a cloud in the distance.  There were about 10 sets of 3 vehicles , an ambulance-fire truck & trooper, all headed toward the wreck from the opposite direction when we got clear of the smoke.

The only other thing that happened that concerned me was the debris that flew out of a truck, in the right lane at about 80 mph, spun around in front of the Honda Civic in front of me.  He hit it and then it spun around and was sucked in behind him so naturally I hit it!!!  Hard to avoid at those speeds and I am not even sure what it was, just that it was about 30" square and 2" high with no bottom (apparently) did not crush when hit twice by the guy in front of me nor by the 2 times I hit it (both tires on the right) with a very loud thump; it must have been metal.  Those tires I rode on are great!  Snow tires, very quiet and sticky and apparently very tough.  215x45x17 Dunlop SP Wintersport 3D's.

Iowa had the most devious speed traps and I am still waiting for photo enforcement to tag me or not!  $1,000 fine for speeding in work zones (understandable).   But when the work zone was done and no work or equipment around and the freeway had opened up to 4 or 5 lanes in each direction they had placed a small 4' square, low, trailer along the freeway a 1/4 miles paced the end of work in that 4 lane section; a 1/4 past the trailer was a resume speed sign;  Boy what a speed trap!  The signs indicated $1000 fine to be doubled in certain situations!!  I figure after another month I might be able to rest more easily...

Interesting trip, and when you get close to The Dragon (we approached from the North Carolina side) it is hard to tell if are getting close because all the roads are very twisty.  Once we hit Fontana Village Resort we knew we were close to The Dragon.  The recommended taking Dramamine for the passenger and since Lee was not interested in using any pills and had a full stomach I was worried.  Guess who was feeling queasy by the end of the 318 turns in 11 miles??  Me!!  There are darn few [places to pull over and take a break in that 11 miles and Killboy.com had taken a few of them for taking photos (I have 3 of those photos posted in the web page I generated).

The MINI handled beautifully with the lowered suspension and got almost zero body roll, even with a full load (3 week trips worth of stuff inside) of 3260 lb.  It would have been fun to drive it with an empty MINI.

Enjoy the rather boring photos we took on the trip, most taken at high speed while driving/riding.

http://mini4fun.info/To_The_Dragon/Going_to_The_Dragon.html

Thank you!  I figured since I was within a few hundred miles of it I MUST do it :-)

Thanks!  It was a fun trip and we got to do some interesting things.

We will go back to the Black Hills and stay in Keystone for a few days to just check out the stuff there and then off to Canada and drive from Edmonton back down through the Canadian Rockies.  Maybe next year if the weather is better.

I discovered that MINI of St. Louis put about 1/2 quart to much oil in SMOG so that got sucked out today and hopefully no damage was done.