[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDdi_ss6JVU]The Great Ice Cream Run stops in Ellsworth - YouTube[/ame] ELLSWORTH — Spending a week in a small, sporty car, taking in sights all along the East Coast and stopping at least three times a day for ice cream might sound like a trip that’s too good to be true, but it’s not. Not, at least, for members of the Tar Heel Mini Motoring Club, a North Carolina-based group of Mini Cooper enthusiasts who hail from across the Southeastern region of the country. On Friday, 10 of the compact car with British roots and a cult following here in the United States rolled into the parking lot at Blueberry Hill Dairy Bar in Ellsworth. The drivers and other occupants of the cars were at one of the final stops on a six-day, nearly 1,000-mile trip from Staunton, Va., to Bar Harbor. Along the way they had stopped at the Civil War battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg, the oldest brewery in America (Yuengling in Pottsville, Pa.) and four lighthouses along the Maine coast. They also made two dozen stops at independent ice cream shops and parlors along the way, from The Split Banana in Staunton to Sweet Creams Café in Stroudsburg, Pa., and from Scoop Deck in Wells to Mount Desert Island Ice Cream in Bar Harbor. The Mini owners, who call themselves “Miniots,†were taking part in the fourth Great Ice Cream Run, a trip that the club makes every two years and gives the car owners a chance to take their beloved vehicles beyond their immediate, everyday environs. Susan Gralla, a Raleigh, N.C. resident and Mini Cooper owner, helped organize the trip. She contacted Marion and Walt MacFarland earlier this year to let them know the Minis would be rolling into town in June, and it’s probably a good thing she did. Marion MacFarland confessed that before Friday, she didn’t know just what a Mini Cooper was or what one looked like. “I know what they are now,†she said with a smile, standing with her arm around Gralla’s shoulders in the Blueberry Hill parking lot. License plates seen on the vehicles included Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. Many of the cars also were decked out with stickers carrying messages riffing on the Mini’s small dimensions: “It’s bigger on the inside†and “Actual size†were two such stickers that were spotted. Source: Mini Coopers barrel along for ice cream