Thunder Road 2022 was a Monte Carlo-style Tour with Car Zero Times and Official Mileage at over 58 Checkpoints, with five On-Course Controls and 14 Restarts. It was run on Saturday, October 15th, sanctioned by the SCCA CalClub Region. It was also the first National Rally event from the Into the Night Rally Team.
The rally covered just under 250 miles in just under 8 hours. Start and Finish were located in Wheeler Ridge, CA, at the base of the famous Grapevine Grade, near the intersection of the I-5 and CA 99 Freeways. This location was a bit remote but allowed us to get onto back roads quickly and stay on back roads for most of the rally. Ten cars made the trip.
The Odometer Calibration took us past the historic Fort Tejon through the small towns of Lebec and Gorman to the first Restart on the old Gorman Post Road. The rally continued up a portion of the original Ridge Route (CA 99), then east along the north slope of the San Gabriel Mountains to Palmdale, following a part of the Butterfield Stage Line of 1849.
After the first break, the rally continued east along Fort Tejon Road through the historic Valyermo community before turning north across the Antelope Valley to a lunch break in downtown Lancaster. By total coincidence, rally day was also the first day of the Edwards AFB Air Show, so some of the cars got to see the Air Force Thunderbirds and Navy Blue Angels performing as we went through that area, which was a very impressive and unexpected bonus.
After lunch, we took the rally onto the Musical Road on W. Avenue G. The Musical Road opened in October 2008. It was initially designed and constructed by Honda as part of a Honda Civic advertising campaign. Using sounds created by our tires driving over grooves in the pavement, it is intended to play the William Tell Overture; it can only be heard in the westbound left lane and is about a quarter mile in length.
We continued up Sierra Highway, the original US 6, into Rosamond, past the east entrance to Edwards AFB, and then west through the Tehachapi wind farm. After the final break in Tehachapi, we followed the old Union Pacific line west past the famous Tehachapi Loop, where the tracks accomplished a significant change in altitude by looping over themselves.
After a short hop on the 58 Freeway, the rally came down the east slope of Bear Mountain into the Central Valley. We planned the rally route to take advantage of scenic views at particular times of the day. The views across the valley as we came down were truly beautiful; it seemed to work out quite well. The Rallymaster chose Checkpoint arrival times to make it easy to count down time crossing the Checkpoints, occurring at the top of the minute or 15, 30, and 45 seconds after the minute. This facilitated all classes being able to achieve low scores.
The dinner at Finish was at the Black Bear Diner back in Wheeler Ridge, where the staff and management were accommodating, and the food was home-style and very satisfying after the long day’s run.
If you’d like to see the complete Route Instructions from this event, please visit our webpage, and follow the link on the home page.
We want to thank all those who participated and all those who helped put the Thunder Road Rally together, especially Paul McGaffey, Larry Scholnick, Sean Stern, and Kari Stern. We look forward to seeing everyone next year for Thunder Road 2023.
RReNews: Our heartfelt appreciation to Rallymaster Joe Akerman for his belief in what we are doing with Road Rally eNews. It was a delight to find this, unsolicted, in the inbox!
