North American Motoring - Maryland to Georgia

From October 30 to November 2, my wife and I took our MINI on its first overnight trip away from home.

We started with I-270 South to the Beltway. Of course, it's impossible to ever drive on the Beltway in Virginia without being in stop-and-go traffic, so we bailed and headed west on I-66 all the way to I-81. From there, we hopped off the highway to take US-501 to US-29. That eventually dumped us onto I-85. We stayed overnight in Charlotte. The initial portion of the trip included some leftover gas mileage from driving around town, which combined with the stop-and-go traffic kept us in the 32 mpg range. For the Staunton to Atlanta leg of the trip, we were around 42 mpg.

After my cousin's wedding in Atlanta, we drove north along US-23 to end up at Tallulah Falls in Georgia, which was a pleasant surprise.

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We stayed on US-23 North until Sylva, where we picked up US-74 East and eventually I-40 to Greensboro. For the mountains portion of the trip, we maintained a healthy mid-30s mpg. The next day, we headed home via US-29 with a stopover in Charlottesville to drive my Maryland-branded MINI across the University of Virginia campus.

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By far, this is the longest trip we've taken so far and we both found it plenty comfortable. I do fidget a lot in my seat, but I do that at work and in my Forester due to back issues, so I'm not going to fault the MINI for that. The mileage was great compared to when we drove our Subaru from Maryland to Florida and even with the premium gas fill-ups, cheaper to. We had a good-sized bag with our clothes that fit in the boot, along with two garment bags and two good-sized wedding gifts; there was no need to put down the rear seats.

This trip pushed our MINI to over 3,000 miles in the first 5 weeks of ownership, so it'll be awhile before we do anymore long trips. Still, there are some mountain roads in West Virginia and Colorado that I can hear whispering, "MINI wants to play..."