An amazing plus for cabrio owners:

1. Use maps.google.com to find your destination, as normal
2. Use the "get directions" feature.
3. Check the "Avoid Highways" box to get different directions.

Yesterday, I took a beautiful 65 minute trip through rural Oregon instead of a boring 54 minute ride on a crowded freeway.

 

I'm heading to Oregon (Portland/Hillsboro) on Monday for the week.
I doubt that I'll get a MINI as a rental car though...

Another nice thing about google maps is that you can "drag and drop" your route to certain POI's (points of interest).

If you get yourself a TomTom you can then use this program to convert it to an iternerary that the TomTom can read...

http://houghi.org/tomtom/

Works pretty slick...