Slow Regional Rally 2025: Eastern Kentucky

My friend Matt from the Lemons and Mercedes community put together a road rally last year in Western NC. 16 people, 7 cars and 2 full days of driving. But it was a little too fast for public roads. So for 2025 he added rules: maximum year 2000 and more than 15lbs/hp. 

Enter the Slow Regional Rally 2025. Matt picked Eastern KY for it's (relativly) central location and incredible twisty roads. Each day he planned about 250 miles of driving for 9 cars and 16 people. The roads were at the perfect level of being fun at 5-10mpg above the speed limit. This is the hardest I've driven my Cherokee and I've got to say, it really is the best car ever. Plenty of power, neutral handling, and the studded snow tires are very easy to drive and communicative!

W124 300D 2.5, W201 190D 2.5, W123 300D, Mk2 Jetta TD, Bay Window Bus, 65 Comet, XJ Cherokee, W202 C280, R50 

We even had a fun team building exercise after a wind storm knocked a tree down across the road. 

Grab some friends and go mob around back roads in slow cars with high profile tires!

What was the route used this year?

We were all over random roads near the Red River Gorge. We used a free trial of a bike touring app. It worked really well. I don't remember the route app last year, but it was garbage.
 

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/50765128
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/50765273

Great. Thanks for sharing.

I have been near that area many times mainly drag racing at clay city. Need to explore those fun routes too.

Hmm only 3hrs south of me.  Might have to save this for a weekend trip.  And now to explore this Ride With GPS and see if I can make some rallies with it.

I wish I would have known about that!  Although, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that MINI post-2000? :)

If you're looking for good routes through Eastern Kentucky, the Backroads of Appalachia folks have a pretty neat app where they've stitched together some really nice routes.