2010 Tombstone Trail

The 2010 Tombstone Trail rally sold out at 50 cars with two weeks to go. All 50 cars started the event in a very light but warm drizzle. This year was the first ever in Isanti County, MN. We didn't know how well it would be received in a new county with fairly well-groomed, well-planned cemeteries. A poll of the contestants at the end indicated that the cemeteries were fun enough that we might do it again.

By the way, the $15 the SCCA grabbed from you for the ridiculous temporary membership can be applied to a full membership, so if you'd like to take advantage of that, let me know, and I'll send you the membership number that was assigned to you.

The rules this year provided for multiple questions at the cemeteries, with the questions getting progressively harder, so contestants had to make a choice between spending less time driving in order to get the harder questions, or more time driving to pick up the easier questions at more cemeteries. Three cemeteries had 4 questions to answer, and were the first tiebreaker for scoring, so most teams elected to try those. However, the most centrally located one was rather large with two trick questions, and many contestants missed those. The first required them to find a hard-to-see cross on top of the bell tower. The second was a quotation from the back of the huge sign at the cemetery entrance.

The second 4-pointer was only a mile from the endpoint, but most teams found themselves too short on time to try to answer it. Those who did got an easy 4 points. The third was actually off the map and only 3 teams attempted to answer questions there. Many others did not even attempt to solve the off-the-map problem, even those in the GPS class.

There were not as many brutally-hard question this year as last, but the number of time-consuming questions requiring extensive searches kept the scoring down compared to last year. The eastern half of the route was heavy on "drive by" questions, where you don't even have to get out of the car, including one cemetery with three drive-bys. The western half had more scoring opportunities, but required much more time to answer.

The rallymasters had tried to trap the unwary at one of these drive-by cemeteries by asking about the cross nearest the southeast corner, correctly guessing that many people would pick the huge white cross and ignore the little yellow cross. However, since both crosses were outside the cemetery, one team argued correctly that the white cross was actually closest to the corner. In the end, we accepted either answer.

Jaime Renner and Jeff Renner took home an impressive overall victory by one point. Class B took home 3 of the top 8 spots, with Renners in 1st, Brian Bessler and Richard Creger 2nd, 7the overall, and Kyle Laursen and Ryan Hammond taking 3rd in B and 7th overall.

Class AA went to Erik Dahl and Chris Ravelli in 2nd overall, only one point out of first. Class AA is the class for the most experienced teams, and they showed it with 3 out of the top 6 spots. Steve Gingras and Pat Olson were second in class and 4th overall, with Doug Atwill and John Wiersma 3rd in AA and 6th overall.

Third overall went to former winners Nina Noe and Brad Odegard in Class A, two points out of first. Bruce Ekholm and Dave Hotvet took 2nd in A and 9th overall. Clarence and Kate Westberg captured 3rd in A, 11th overall.

Todd and Rita Jarvey claimed the Class G win in 5th overall over Dan Meyer and Dawn Holmberg.

Class C went to Allie Micka and Jeremiah Davis in 13th overall. Derek Atkinson and Krista Ceason took 2nd, with Kat Traxler and Tara Cajacob 3rd. In class D, Curt and Teresa Hopperstad took the win over Joe Samek and TJ Samek.

The best costume award went to Max and Judy Hinkley for their Gorrilla Zombies.

Thanks to Vicki Larson, who co-rallymastered the event with me, and to Gary Starrr and Vicki Larson for their help with registration and scoring. Thanks also to Tami Benike and Traci Brant, who helped with registration.

Mark Larson
Rallymaster

You can see the event results here.

Read the 2009 report.