Hi all!
I just wanted to write a quick note to thank you all for coming out to motor with me.
Whew, what a great time I had. There were 9 new MINIs and 2 classic Minis, with twenty people all together. The day started early for the Phoenix area folks. They hit the road around 8AM and met up with us down at the Gas City on Exit 302 around 10AM. I had stayed the night in Sierra Vista and met up with 3 other MINIs from Sierra Vista at 9:30. Another MINI came over to exit 302 from Tucson. So the 7 MINIs motored down to the State park just 7 miles south of the I-10. Two more MINIs showed up as we were waiting for our tour time. One was a straggler from Phoenix and the other was from the eastern side of Arizona. The two classics were going to meet us just outside the park after the tours.
The caverns were beautiful. Everything was just as nice as advertised. It's amazing they just found these caverns in 1974. I could have spent more time there exploring their exhibits in the welcome center, but there was motoring to be done. So, after the tour, we make a quick pit stop at the gift shop then hit the road. We had an adventuresome join up with the two classic Mini Cooper S's, thank you Bill for you help in the situation. Then we headed south to the Military base (Fort Huachuca) and got our temp passes. In we went for a slow cruise thru of an active military base, and went up onto Reservoir Hill on the base where you could overlook the valley to the east and to the north. What beautiful vistas we had of the monsoonal thunderstorms as they rolled across the valleys.
Then we went out the Fort's back gate and onto a very cool twisty road. We stopped a couple of times just to catch our breath. Everyone seemed to be smiling and some were high-fiving each other. So I knew J. and Jenny had picked out some of the best twisties for us to motor on in the Sierra Vista area.
Some were definitely ready for food. So we motored quickly down some more rural roads over to Sonoita for dinner at a steak house. Out plans were that after dinner we'd head down to Nogales and then back up along the I-19 where there was a road that is reportedly more fun than what we just did. But, I think we must have been enjoying each other’s company way to much because we didn't get out until it was dark. There were two thunder cells headed our way, we were sleepy from our bellies being full and it was dark. So we agreed that we'd have to do the I-19 areas on a future fun run. There's also a lot of vineyards we can tour thru as well as many happy motoring miles of twisties.
This fun-run was a little different from the others I've put together. This fun run had a group activity, the cavern tour. So we didn't get to motor on as many miles of twisties as previous fun runs did. However, I think the time we spent chatting and getting to know one another, the time spent on the fabulous cavern tour, and the short bit we got to motor really made it into a very special and memorable fun-run.
Some pix. I'll get mine posted later today...
http://www.minicooperonline.com/modu...um.php&page=22