Yeah, the island was great! I was turned away from the Grand Hotel though, I was not in "proper attire".
Too far to go for a one day event, no organized after the attempt drives. I know there are some good roads and sights in the area. Kuddos for the attempts, always fun seeing a mass of MINIs. But not for me.
Being an easy day's drive from home, the fact of it being a single day event was less of a deterrent for me. Coming from more distant locales, you'd almost be forced to add in some creative vacation days before or after to make the trip worthwhile. My wife and I added three days to the return trip to explore the U.P. coastline from Tahquamenon Falls to Duluth, and those scenic top-down motoring days were definitely the highlight for us. Without a route map from the morning rendezvous to the bridge, a few sharp knives in the drawer managed to exit I-75 S early at US-31 (rather than the intended turnaround further south) leading a couple hundred MINIs astray since there was no way of knowing the correct course. Even if we'd had 1451+ MINIs, we were so spread out when passing the "official" counting segment south of the bridge that we probably wouldn't have satisfied the strict Guinness WR criteria. Lunch was much better organized this time at Little Bear Arena in St. Ignace (virtually no wait, instead of the previous experience in 2013 of 90 minutes) but the whole post-bridge crossing after party was pretty dead. Not much to keep the attention of those present, and I saw a steady stream of MINIs bailing out even prior to the raffle and auction. And I can't understand why aftermarket vendors weren't provided the opportunity to market their wares. Over 2,000 people eager to spend their money on cool MINI stuff, and the only option was a MINI of Grand Rapids tent with a limited selection of the same old standard dealer merchandise. What a lost opportunity. All things considered it was a fun time...but a bit more will need to be offered next time (if there is a next time) to convince me to return. That's information enough for me to know that I don't belong. Glad I bypassed it. My wife doesn't like boats.
Well, for starters there was the Great Ice Cream Run 5 as a lead in to MOTM, and I saw a bunch of posts for both Friday and Sunday excursions to some of the more scenic areas nearby, Tahquamenon Falls, Whitefish Bay, Sault St. Marie (locks, access to Canadian Beer!), the Harbor Springs/Petoskey area (there's a great road - lower lakeshore drive - that reminds me a lot of a short dragon), a little farther away are Traverse City and Interlochen for the music enthusiasts among us, ... and those are just a few.
OK, so where are all the videos, especially the 'official' one available to be viewed? As of 5 minutes ago there was 1 from 2015 and 2 from 2013 on youtube.
I know some of the folks that went on the IceCream run, but missed the posts for other drives Friday, Saturday or Sunday. I'd bet that's why some folks were saying "nothing else organized to do there".