Recap - Pumpkin Farm Halloween Run - October 30, 2021
Your Hosts; Simon and Nikki Tildesley
Run dedicated to Lauryn Taylor who passed away Oct 23rd after a battle with Cancer. Lauryn was one of our oldest members and has supported the club as well as many MTTS over the years.
Due to the cancellation once again of the original October run to Bear Country, the club put an impromptu drive together. This was a duplicate drive of the pumpkin run we completed in Oct 2020 taking in the back hills of Dublin and Livermore, up over the Altamont Pass before taking in Patterson Pass Rd to Joan’s pumpkin patch in Livermore.
On a cooler Saturday morning 33 MINI’s met at the Buffalo Wild Wings parking lot in Dublin. Some of the people joined the Halloween spirit and had dressed themselves, their dogs and even their MINI’s up for the drive. Dolores handed out some candies and Carol Chin kindly gave out fortune cookies to the attendees.
We headed out as a single group as the drive is quite straightforward and there aren’t too many places to get split up. Larry Anderson helped though being mid car as he drove the route with us last year and knew the roads. David and Anne Sitter kindly took the job of sweeping as the caboose.
For this run – we were once again quite lucky that the number of bicycles was at a minimum. We were just held up in a couple of places by slower moving trucks. So as the lead of the group, I decided to hold back and pull to the side of the road to allow some distance to build so we could get to enjoy our little cars more.
Sadly, we did lose one of the cars on the run as his car started to make some funny noises. David did take a listen and felt it should be ok – but the member decided to split and head home as a precaution. This did not deter the rest of the group driving some of the awesome back roads with very little traffic towards out final destination. My tip to other members – if you haven’t driven Patterson Pass Rd at a weekend – go do it. It is a great drive when you have a MINI.
Upon arrival at Joan’s, we lined the cars up against the fence for one last phot shoot. After that, some people opted to head straight home whilst others took the opportunity to walk the patch and take in some festive spirit.
I think this run is so much fun that we will now make it an annual event and try to visit some of the other pumpkin patches in the area.
Simon & Nikki Tildesley
For more photos from the day, see the albums on Facebook or in this Google Photos album.