MINI agreed to lend me a 2025 Cooper S so I could drive 3,100 miles to cover the action during Monterey Car Week. Follow the entire series by clicking here.
The distance from Lincoln, Nebraska to Salt Lake City, Utah is 876 miles. According to the onboard navigation, this computes to a total of 12 hours and 18 minutes of driving before any stops. It was a long day, but the new 2025 MINI Cooper S took it all in stride.
A lot of this was due to the truly excellent driver assistance options on the car. It holds lanes well as long as your hands are on the wheel and the adaptive cruise control does not follow too close to or too far behind other vehicles and makes speed adjustments the same way I would if I were doing it all manually. Did I mention that in addition to this, the new MINI is delivering a truly spectacular 42 mpg at an average speed of 77 mph?!?
The whole time I was on I-80 in Nebraska today, it rained. This made stops a bit lame. My usual stop at the The Archway exhibit that crosses I-80 was a bust as it was not yet open and my first stop at the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles also found it closed. I will say that both are truly great museums and well worth visiting.
I got lucky on my gas stop in North Platte, Nebraska because I found a surprise attraction called the Fort Cody Trading Post. It had all the usual western tchotchke gifts, but it also had a pretty neat free museum of historic Buffalo Bill items and a really neat hand-carved wooden miniature version of his Wild West Show. It really is worth the stop if you like American Old West stuff.
The rest of the day was just making miles. Once I got out of Nebraska, the rain was gone and I made my second fuel stop at the Sinclair station in Sinclair, Wyoming, where I posed Minion the MINI with the Sinclair Dinosaur.
At 6 p.m., I finally arrived in Salt Lake City, checked in at – yes, another – Fairfield Inn (a really nice one) and wrote this story.
Tomorrow is a shortish trip to Reno, Nevada, which should give me time to actually do some exploring of more weird roadside stuff and stay at a hotel that is – surprise – not a Fairfield Inn. In fact, it is a pretty neat place and you will see photos of it tomorrow.
