Lake Superior Pro Rally - Part 1: The Lead-Up

On to the fun stuff. Our first stage rally was the Lake Superior Performance Rally held way the hell up in Houghton, MI. Sure, it's the same state but it's ridiculously far away. We could have driven to Florida in the time it took us to get to Houghton. We were lucky enough to round up a stellar crew for the rally, consisting of Dmitriy Martynov, a fellow rallycrosser, autocrosser and stage rallyist as well as Kyle Steinkamp, who is a real rally enthusiast with some crew experience. Kyle's a student up at Michigan Tech in Houghton too, so that was actually very helpful. Dmitriy was kind enough to provide his Tundra as a tow/service vehicle, so with the four of us in the truck, the bed full of junk and the rally car on a rented U-Haul trailer, we made the trek up to Houghton.

We left on Thursday evening, and drove about 4 hours to Mackinaw City at the northern tip of Michigan's Lower Penninsula. We then slept a little, and in the morning, crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Penninsula. Which is Gorgeous. We stopped at a scenic spot for some fresh air, a look at the coast and some photos.


When we finally got to Houghton, we checked into our hotel, unloaded the car and went through registration and tech surprisingly quickly. After a nice lunch in Houghton, we made our way to the surprisingly-hard-to-find practice stage where we finally got to see what this whole rally thing is all about. I felt a little silly reading the same directions four times in a row as we drove what was essentially a rallycross, but it was a great exercise to get acquainted with the notes so we both could associate the words with actual road features. Here we are getting ready for the practice stage:


After practice, we had dinner and went on a rampaging shopping spree to prepare for the next day. We got all kinds of things like hi-liters, a little file pocket, lights, and my favorite item, a purple Barbara's Way by Stanley tool bag.