Road Trip #3 is all done and dusted! We arrived back home at 01:30 last night, a bit punchy from the road but otherwise in great spirits. Road Trip #3 (Regular Road Trip) is on the books and when I went to plot our route I discovered that we've exceeded the waypoint limits for both Apple Maps and Google Maps, even when I try to pare it down to just the highlights. Here's a rough sketch of our route using MapQuest and I clearly need to come up with a better approach for this before our next trip. Maybe I can produce a GPX or something from one of our Garmin devices and then work from that.
We covered 4,624 miles over 14 days and the odometer is sitting at 14,505 miles right now. That's 69.9 miles a day since we took delivery of the car. We passed through 15 states plus DC. No mechanical issues this trip other than a screw and washer that fell out of the wind deflector. We ended up covering a lot more distance than we had expected and got the alert for an oil change as we came down out of the mountains in Virginia. Closest dealers were in Atlanta and Charlotte. so we routed through Atlanta on the way back to get the car's first oil change (performed at 13,441 miles). It all left us pondering what percentage of Ferraris get their first oil change as a result of mileage vs just aging out.
I'm confident we were the first Ferrari to ever drive on many of the roads we covered, particularly in PA and OH. Certainly the enthusiastic waves and smiles we got and endless gas pump conversations reflected the novelty of our route and distance. Our Texas license plate also drew a lot of positive attention the farther away from home we were.
We stopped at both a Sheetz and a Wawa while in PA. More pics to follow, we've got a lot of importing and processing to do.
We met up with the owner of a beautiful verde mugello 456 GT in Indianapolis and took some green Ferrari photos. I know these various shades of green can often be difficult to capture in a photo, and I find it particularly cool to be able to get both in the same shot. I think these turned out great and are a decent reproduction of how the cars looked on the day.
From Indiana we cut back south and headed down to Columbus and spent a day hiking in Hocking Hills State Park. Then we headed eastwards towards Pennsylvania doing a lot of "avoid highways" in Apple Maps. This is a bold strategy and sometimes it caught us out as roads got progressively more sketch and we ended up on
a crazy gravel road in the middle of nowhere near Athens, OH for a bit where it was too narrow to turn around and we just had to press on. All ended well, though, and we are continuing our tradition of taking Ferraris where they don't really belong.
Tuesday night we stayed in Pittsburg. We stopped by
Steel City Arts Foundation on our way out this morning, which is an incubator for comedians and artists sponsored by a favorite comedian of mine, Steve Hofstetter. Knowing better than to drop in unannounced on a bunch of comedians at 9 in the morning, we just took a photo by the mural and then hit the road.
I can highly recommend
The Brickhouse restaurant in Orwigsburg, PA. We ate dinner there two nights in a row and might have gone for a third if we were staying here another night. Amazing food and a great bar. We met the owner, Joe, who turned out to be an FCA member with an F430. So naturally we got up early this morning and swapped keys for a great drive in the rolling hills north of town.
We had a great run through Virginia and North Carolina with a couple of our Miata friends, including a run up and down
Back of the Dragon. BOTD seems more aimed at bikers but it was a really fun, very twisty bit of road and nowhere near as crowded as Tail of the Dragon. If you ever find yourself nearby, I recommend making the time. (Photo credit:
botdpix)
After BOTD we aimed for Atlanta and stayed the night in Roswell up near the dealership. We showed up at Ferrari of Atlanta first thing on Monday morning as they opened. Thankfully everyone there was super helpful and happy to squeeze us in for an oil change without an appointment and they had us back on the road by 2pm. Vance and the whole crew were a treat to work with, and we got to gawk at the two F40s they have (one in the showroom, one in the workshop), a 288 GTO, and a '71 Dino (my personal favorite).
We caught a ride share downtown, saw cool fish and sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, ate hot dogs at The Varsity for lunch, and then got back to the dealer to pick up the car. Then a short drive on I-20 to Birmingham. We visited with friends in Birmingham and then pushed straight through for home from there, through New Orleans, Lake Charles, and Houston.