Hello there Eastern Iowa MINI's! I am putting together a weekend get away drive for the last weekend in August. This drive is targeted to end in Madison, WI for
Taste of Madison. I love the Taste of Chicago event and think the Taste of Madison event would be a great event to make it to.
The plan is start the drive on the 30th from Iowa City, and then head to Wisconsin to meet up with the Wisconsin and Illinois MINI groups to finish up the drive to Madison for an evening at the taste.
Once we head north we will make a stop for some leg stretching and lunch. After some leg stretching we will continue our drive north east with the first days drive ending with us arriving in Madison Wisconsin for a nice dinner and possibly some pestering of the Madison MINI group. Taste of Madison hosts around 60 food vendors and live music so I would expect Saturday night to be a night on the town eating and taking in some concerts.
Day two will essentially be a return trip back home, with the night before being the mainstay of the Taste. If you want to revisit the taste you can of course do so, but Thanks to Dustin from the Chicago MINI Driving Group there is a Sunday Vineyard Tour driving west after breakfast, then North and back east to Madison. For those that have to head back(such as myself) We will part from the Vineyard tour at around noon to head back home. For those that want to head home on Sunday afternoon or Labor Day/Monday it will be a fun filled day and night back in Madison area. 
Updated Winery Tour info!
Here's some more details. Meet at 9am for Breakfast in Downtown Middleton WI at the Hubbard Ave Diner, http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&...3&z=16&iwloc=A At 10am street side drivers meeting and head out. Anyone that wants to join us is welcome. We will visit 4 local Winery's in a tour of 160 miles. The 2nd and 3rd vineyards are near the Iowa state line, the 4th is half way back to Madison. Should be back in Madison late afternoon. There will be a stop for lunch TBD.
If you are interested in making the drive please let me know so I have a good estimate of what we can expect for numbers so I can contact Madison area hotels for pricing on any possible group discounts. Hopefully this is something of interests to all of you EIM Minis.
I will post a link to this on our EIM site and MinisofIowa.com
