It all started...
...with a group of passionate Miata drivers.
Brian Liechty was our unelected leader. We used to go on drives with DeLorme Gazetteers, basic paper maps, or we'd stop and look at the GPS for curvy roads, and head off. Brian took us to a new level. He talked to other Miata drivers, scoured the internet for sites that talked about roads to drive, stared at google maps and set up routes with the occassional gravel road thrown in. (Oops!). He then built the gpx files so we could have them on our GPS units. In 2016, he prepared our trip heading south from from Marietta, OH through West Virginia, Virginia, north into Tennessee and Kentucky, then back to Indiana. He emailed us the route and pointed out a "cool little road" he'd added in. Hey! It was paved!
On the GPS, it looked like a scribble, but it was paved and it was a Cool Little Road.
From then on, our trips were Cool Little Road (CLR) trips. New friends were made, existing friendships strengthened, and we looked for new Cool Little Roads to drive.
Brian finished planning our spring CLR to head east, but was working on a major trip for September of 2021. We'd done a Colorado CLR in 2019 and wanted to do another extended CLR, talked about a west coast trip, so Brian started outlining an epic west coast adventure. We were all excited. And then... Covid-19.
Brian entered the hospital with Covid in mid-February and passed away on March 30, 2021. Damn.
