August 18th my girlfriend and I took my JDM 1992 MR2 GT-S all the way down to Vegas and back. 5000 km of desert roads, mountain roads and long highways but the MR2 lived, sort of. By the time we reached Vegas the recently filled AC had leaked completely, making for a ridiculously uncomfortable drive to Hoover Dam in 45 C heat, apparently the hotest day of 2011 in Vegas at the time.
Having said that, the car ran smoothly and besides the broken AC I never had a problem. I got back to Calgary fine but the car is making a bunch of loose knocking sounds and it sounds like a cricket is living in my transmission somewhere.
Below is a rough google maps rendition of the way we took.
As for the roads, Moab has some wicked little valley roads with beautiful paving and unlimited twists and turns, definitely worth your time.
The best road just might have been the stretch on the I-93 between Idaho Falls and Missoula. The I-93 (scenic route) had remotely no one on it, has a speed limit of 60-70 for the most part (in mph) and it's full of twists as the road follows a small river most of the way.
Anyways on to the pics, I realized when I got home that I should have taken more photos of my car but oh well, here are all the pictures of either the MR2 or cool roads to see.
Let me know what you think!
This is the scenic route 93, a tiny piece of it but you get the point, it's a fun road.
This is the entire route we took, roughly.
MR2 in Arches National Park!
Different view of the 2 in Arches National Park. Where are the arches you ask? We were wondering the same thing, haha, we went back the next day and found them. For future reference they're actually called windows, and they're down a road that we obviously didn't take the first night there.
Hoover Dam, disgustingly hot, but worth it. Actually so hot there were paramedics treating people with heat stroke.
Tried to capture the essence of driving through Arches National Park at sunset, T-top off. It was wicked, Moab cools down at night unlike Vegas, so it's actually comfortable driving at night.
There are some roads best not attempted with an MR2. I got out to snap this one as recommended by the driver.
Craters of the Moon National Park, definitely worth a drive through if you have time.