Our First MINI Roadtrip

We were eager to tryout our MINI on a road trip, so we decided to head to the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia where there is some fun roads for us to drive on. However, when we first arrived at the main entrances of the George Washington National Forest and Shenandoah National Park both were closed due to the snow. At first, we thought we were going to have a repeat of last weekend with the misfortune of having bad luck with closed parks, but Steve came to the rescue and found us another way into part of the park. Yay!!!

Once in the park, we stopped at the Augusta Springs Wetlands. We explored two different trails. One was a wetland trail that went through a beaver pond where we could see some cool beaver dams, foundations of an area they used to do bottling, and other evidence of stone foundations. As well as the wetlands trail, we also explored another which we though led to the springs. We got so far and noticed an old car in the woods. Of course, we had to go and check it out. LOL

 After we left the Augusta Springs, we took another detour off the beaten path and ended up driving forever on a snow covered dirt road. It was about 12 miles long, though it seemed like it took forever. By the time we got back to the main road, it was starting to get dark and so we decided to go and find our hotel for the night. We dropped off our stuff and then got dinner at a restaurant called The Roanoker which is a local favorite and their biscuits were even featured on NBC's The Today Show. On the way back to the hotel, we passed by the Virginia Transportation Museum. It looked like an awesome place to take Tyler, however it was already closed for the night. Returning back to the hotel, we pretty much called it a night as we were exhausted. Here are some more photos of our adventures from that day.