I was wondering if anyone has run this before. Me and the wife signed up for the regional rally cause it sounded fun. Looking to hear any comments about it. http://www.marblesoft.com/rally/documents/Tombstone%20Trail%20Flyer.pdf Anyone else joining? http://www.marblesoft.com/tombstone
I'll be doing it again this year, I did it last year and it was a blast. Mark, if you see this I'll be sending in my registration within the week, I'm just waiting on my codriver to see if he can make it.
I've heard from a number of people that this event is a great time. I think my wife and I are going to run.
It is typically a map rally so there is no set "course". You just have to use the map to get to the bone yards to answer the questions. It is like a scavenger hunt in a car. Many of the roads are gravel. Worried about your paint, go rent a car! Everyone owes it to themselves to run this event. It is a blast. It is about driving some fun roads at night and tripping over tombstone in the dark while trying to find in what year George Featherstone died. Also, some years, some of the bone yards are "haunted". Just do it!
Highly recommended. Yes generally lots of gravel but hey, that's where our cars really come into their own.
Showed this to my wife on Friday, and she demanded that we sign up right then. Didn't expect her to be so excited about it. Not that I'm complaining at all.
So what MNSubaru members are all signed up for this? It is already filled. Hope to see some of you on Saturday.
My wife and I signed up, and my sister and her husband decided they wanted to ride along as well. Nothing like 4 completely cluessless people, I'm sure we'll get our asses lost so many times it won't even be funny. Thank god for my mirror compass, it's saved me many times when I'm checking out random gravel roads. My wife's all gung-ho, trying to find all sorts of maps and cemetary info online. Not sure what good that will do her, since I'm guessing you aren't supposed to have that kind of stuff along in the first place. I guess her coworker has known Mark for years, and did quite a few of these way back when it first started.
if anyone wants a passenger/navigator who knows northfield/faribault/new prague/cannon falls pretty well.... let me know. i've got plenty of time to kill this weekend.
Bikerboy wimped out on me, said he'd rather go on a date with a girl than be crammed into the back of a wagon with 2 guys for the night. Sheesh...some people...
Well, just got back, and I must say we had a blast. Didn't score very well, 11 points (minus 1 for being late, more on that later), and we didn't get the mystery tombstone. We screwed up a couple of the D-L questions, so that's what hurt us in the end. We did make it to almost every single graveyard, which we thought was pretty good for first timers. The driving was great. I took every single gravel shortcut I could, and the 9-2x handled awesome, even with 33k on the stock RE92s. The Old Church Road was one of the best roads I've ever been on. Nice packed dirt with lots of curves. Anyway, about that minus 1 point.... We leave the mystery graveyard at 10:35, and we need to be at Godfather's by 10:42. We get to County Road 1 at about 10:40, so we think we're gonna make it. Only one small problem, we can't see Godfathers anywhere. So we keep driving on 61, and all four of us are looking. Speed limit drops to 40, so I slow down. The one guy with us that had been to Red Wing before says that he's pretty sure we passed it. So I drive a couple more blocks and start looking for a place to turn around. Just as I go to turn, I look in my rearview and see flashing lights. WTF, it's a cop!? I think to myself, what the hell, I know I'm not speeding, did I forget my lights or something, or maybe seatbelts? So I pull over, he walks up and ask for license/reg, and asks how fast I was going. I say around 40 or so, and he says, "Yeah, 43, in a 30." "Sh*t" is all I can say (yeah, outloud). I guess as we we're frantically looking for Godfathers, I missed the 30mph speed limit sign. He asks what we're up to, and we tell him the Tombstone Trail, and that we're lost and can't find Godfathers. He walks back to his car, then comes back about a minute later, tells me to just watch my speed, and I get directions from him to Godfathers. Awesome guy, I was glad he understood that we genuinely missed the sign. I turned around, and drive the couple blocks down Old Main St. to Godfathers. Turns out that the sign was turned off, so that's why we didn't see it from 61. Ugh, talk about bad luck, especially after I spent the entire night making sure I was driving very close to the speed limit. Edit: Also saw a 9-2x Linear there. Parked next to him at Country Kitchen.
Bummer about the late due to pull over. Good break that he was understanding. Jim Anderson and I did pretty well for newbies with a 2nd in D class. We didn't find the mystery grave but still got 14 pts with 1 time penalty. The team that beat us had 16 and found the mystery grave. Sounds like they were from the, "work smarter, not harder" school of thought. They in essence found (6) 1 pt tombs and the mystery, worth 10 pts. While we found (15) 1 pt tombs, minus the time penalty. Much more running around. Congrats to Mark, Breon and team for their overall win! The smartest team of all with, I think, 28 pts including the mystery grave. All while sending the women out to do the grave hunting and no running. Bravo!
Me and my wife dana plus friends did pretty darn well for our first time too. We were suprised to see that we took 8th overall and second in class C (we were tied for first but lost the tie breaker) We could have done better if we hadn't stayed so long at some of the graveyards. I found the mystery tombstone within 30 seconds of entering the graveyard. I was suprised. We cant wait for next year. Did anyone catch what mark larson was saying about a rally around christmas? Congratulations to all it was a good event. Shaun Sapala
