In August we will be picking up a 2005 MINI Cooper in Fort Meyers Florida and will be driving it to our home in Northwestern Washington State - about
4000 miles. We are somewhat limited for time but we want to make the trip as interesting as we can. We will be running the Tail of Dragon
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and then heading NW - probably stopping at the Indy 500 Museum, driving through Badlands, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Our emphasis is on scenic back roads, small towns, and scenic or historical points of interest. Please post any suggestions for places to see or places to avoid. Thanks. Jack G.
I tend to agree. About two months ago, we took my wife's BMW in for scheduled service. The dealer always gives us a loaner for the day, so we chose a Mini.
After a few hours of street and freeway driving, I had enough of the kidney-busting ride.
The '08s are supposed to be a little longer in wheelbase, but I doubt it'll make enough difference to ever have one on my list of possible future vehicles.
Thanks everyone for the unsolicited advice on what we should and should not be doing. We are very familiar with the pluses and minuses of MINI Coopers - the one we are driving on the trip from Florida will become our
2nd MCS and we are very satisfied with our first one. Obviously I asked the wrong group about a trip for people who love to get off the interstates and drive back roads and enjoy the experience. Please, no more comments on this thread.
A Mini Cooper sounds like a good start to me for an interesting vacation. :-) On our trips I drive a Mini, too, but it's a Toyota Mini Van.
Come to think of it, our Aerostar gave us "interesting" vacations but not in a good way. :-(
We have enjoyed our stays at various times in The Badlands NP, SD, Custer SP, SD (in the Black Hills) and Theodore Roosevelt NP, ND. However, we did enjoy these as camping trips and a Mini isn't something I'd associate with camping (there can't be all that much room in it for camping gear but perhaps you pack light). Theodore Roosevelt NP has some nice scenic drives and hikes and beautiful Badlands of its own. However, it's the place where hermits go to get away from it all; TRNP gets as many visitors in a year as Yosemite gets before lunch. This can be a plus. There's also an opportunity (or at least there was a few years ago) for a reasonably priced trail ride, which we enjoyed (we're such dudes). Nearby Medora is a very nice town, although tiny.
If you go to the Black Hills, you might stop in Hill City at a place called "The Alpine Inn" for dinner. The two items on the menu are the small steak and the large steak. The large steak isn't particularly large but they're both very good and, the last time we were there, maybe two years ago, they were very reasonably priced (like $8 and $12 which included your soft drink - I suppose you could call and check). I can also suggest you try it for lunch but it's been quite a few years since we were there for lunch, so that may well have changed. The lunch menu back then was more varied and my sandwich (which involved turkey, some really good cheese and tomato and I forget what else) was really good and fairly reasonable. If you get into town, you migh ask around before you commit to a meal there.
Since you're driving a sporty little thing, you might enjoy The Needles Highway and The Pigtail Bridges in The Black Hills (very twisty) but you are also very likely to get stuck behind tourists driving giant motor homes. In which case, back off and let them get well ahead of you and around the next bend so you can just enjoy the pretty scenery. I don't recall that SD is much into guardrails, by the way. Perhaps I misremember.
In and around Rapid City, at the eastern edge of The Black Hills, one of the premier attractions is "The Reptile Gardens." We enjoyed that, very much.
You can also go further North and West to Fort Union, near Williston, ND, which is an interesting stop, and nearby Fort Buford (I might be misremembering the exact name), which, once again, redefines "away from it all." We went up there in mid-late Summer and the top of the current page in the Guest Book at Fort Buford had been signed in February. Fort Buford was not nearly as interesting or as well restored as Fort Union. Fort Union is located at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. In
1850 or so, it was right on the river bank and now the river is quite a distance away. One of the NPS Rangers there had made a hobby of investigating Native American methods of making and preserving food and he was interesting to listen to (he might not be there, now, of course).
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Also you might visit the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, near Bismarck (center of the state, anyway), ND, to see a recreation of a large earth covered lodge, such as Lewis and Clark would have stayed in over the winter of '04/'05.
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There's another historic site associated with Lewis and Clark nearby but I forget the name of it (and we did not visit).
If you take a more Southerly route and go across Nebraska, stop in Gothenburg at the last surviving Pony Express station (which was originally somewhere else but got moved to its current location). If you drive NW from about Grand Island (? maybe it was Prairie Island?), NE towards Scott's Bluff and Hot Springs, I think you'll pass an "attraction" called "Windlass Hill," where, legend has it, the wagons of the pioneers had to be winched up the hill. The ruts there are purported to be wagon wheel ruts. I'm not sure I believed that but I did believe the signs that said the grass off the sidewalk was inhabited by rattlesnakes. We needed a few minutes out of the van, so we enjoyed the stop. We did not see any snakes.
DH - Thanks for the Great information - it fills in a big gap in our trip planning data. We were planning on the drive through the Badlands NP - now we have lots of other options as well.
At TRNP, the scenery is much more striking, partly due to layers of lignite in the soil (vivid stripes) and also to more varied vegetation. If camping, the buffalo may roam right through your campsite (between our tents and the car! Dad! What do we do! Ummm... no sudden movements, I guess). Campsites beautifully located under cottonwoods along the Little Missouri (if memory serves - a small river, anyway). Showers available in Medora, at the community pool (which we visited; it was incredibly hot when we visited).
At Badlands NP, I think it's easier to find fossils washing out of the cliffs, and it's fun to search for them. Also, you can drive much of the way to Rapid City in the NP and on secondary roads but the speed limit in the NP will be fairly low. It's very scenic but slow. There's a restaurant in the NP operated by Native Americans with above-average food (buffalo burgers and fry breads) but they don't take advantage of location and gouge you on price (at least, not back then). Campground is above average but does not quite compare with TRNP.
Also, if you travel I-90 through SD, you should probably stop in at the ultimate in kitsch - Wall Drug - for a laugh, if nothing else but you can get almost anything else there if you do stop. Free coffee, I think. The Corn Palace, in Mitchell, is worth a look, if it's near lunchtime when you go by.
I've often considered driving here:
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but haven't. It's more or less along I-90. It may strike you as interesting. Pipestone National Monument should be in that general vicinity, too. Friends have visited that and enjoyed the tour (long time ago).
If you elect to go further North, along I-94, there were "Space Alien Cafe's" in Fargo and Bismarck. The kids absolutely insisted we stop there and it was kind of fun (for ND, anyway). If you're just adults traveling, I guess you could skip it. It was some years ago, though, and they may well have folded.
Who the FUCK are YOU to try to tell US to NOT post any opinions. In MY humble opinion, anyone who would drive more than 25 miles in THAT POS (pile o shit), has to be certifiably insane. On the other issue, we strongly prefer AVOIDING interstates and taking the more scenic routes, even though they ARE longer in miles and time. Most interstates are terminably BORING..of course, that's exactly what they are supposed to be like--no surprises.
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