off road with a Mirage

[Donut]

I made another trip with my dear Dolly. This excursion took us onto new roads in the forest of Green Ridge, MD. New roads, in that, i did not expect unpaved tracks at all with the consequence that the whole trip got something of an off-road experience. There are two kinds of roads in this park. The first is gravel with only few bumps and allows speeds of 25-30MPH, the second kind is the more challenging. It's basically compacted earth with many pot and water holes all over the place. There are also some trenches that make driving there quite tedious. My GPS and ignorance made me follow the latter road in the first place.

It was fun!

With the exception of one spot, where I had to u-turn (giant trench with water), the Mirage handled the terrain like a champ. I was driving a lot in first gear to cope with the potholes and to crawl through the water puddles. One pothole was too deep and it somewhat scratched the front air-dam. On the compacted roads, I've only seen SUV and trucks on the camping sites, but on the gravel, also other cars were present. The soft suspension and the large ground clearance of the Mirage give it a SUV light behavior and allowed it to go where other cars would not dare to drive.

At the beginning, I had the front grill fully blocked, but then I noticed that the fan would come on all the time and removed it for the hardcore part of my trip, some of the slopes are indeed steep. I also took occasional breaks, to let my brakes cool down. They were hot to the touch, but I guess not overheated, since they were not smelling, as they sometimes do for trucks on steep descents.

I would not do this kind of trip too early after a rainy day, since the water holes and the rain-formed trenches are the most troublesome, to my opinion.

But I feel comfortable knowing that my Mirage can handle even the toughest situations. Now, I am waiting for rain, to get her clean again :-)

The total distance on this rough terrain was about 20 miles, the 180 miles rest was highway with mostly 65 MPH speed limit. I got an nice 49.9 MPG for the round-trip.

[Don]

Your Mirage looks great out in the wild.

[Daox]

Sounds like a great trip, and nice MPG too. Thanks for sharing.

[MetroMPG]

Sounds like a good trip.

I got an nice 49.9 MPG for the round-trip.

Given the type of driving, that's impressive.