Over the past few weeks I’ve been working as a Professional Driver on the Kia Stinger Experience Tour. If you’re not familiar with this event, it’s a 9-week tour of 9 different cities to promote Kia’s new performance sedan, the Stinger. Because of this great opportunity it pretty much ties up my Thursdays through Mondays of every week due to travel and the fact that they have it scheduled around most normal working people’s days off.
This year my birthday on the 13th of March fell on a Tuesday, so because of this schedule I was working it would mean that I would have a day off on my birthday.
I also decided that because I hadn’t really been getting the chance to drive my ‘17 Volkswagen GTI that I would spend at least the morning going on a drive. It just so happens that I also was coming from Washington D.C. and my internal clock would still be on east coast time which meant that I would have no problem getting up in the morning.
I made the decision to wake up before sunrise and go for a drive on the Sunrise Highway to watch the sun wake up for the day on top of Mt. Laguna. I don’t think I had ever seen this before and thought this was the perfect opportunity.
Sure enough as soon as 4:00 am rolled around I was wide awake. I took my time getting ready and was probably out my door by about 4:45 am.
If you’re not familiar with the San Diego area and it’s wide array of mountain roads, the Sunrise Highway spans from the 8 freeway and goes along the top of Mt. Laguna until it brings you down into the Lake Cuyamaca area where you intersect with Cuyamaca Highway which will take you to Julian.
The Sunrise Highway is a nice flowing road with some amazing views of the desert down below. I’ve driven many different types of vehicles up there and it’s always a great drive with minimal traffic. There is a spot that is pretty much at the summit where you can sit and look out over the desert, giving a great view. I’ve sat up here before in a Tundra that I used to own while weather rolled over the top of it at a decent rate of speed. It was surreal. Because of this I figured I’d drive my GTI up there on my birthday and see what kind of pictures I could snap.
I now know why it got it’s name as the Sunrise Highway and why the Volkswagen GTI is a more refined instrument of driving than I thought it would be.
This was just as I arrived at the highest point you can drive to on Mt. Laguna. It’s a dead end that you can enter off the Sunrise Highway. I got to it around 6:00 am when the sun was still down and sat with my car pointed to the East. Sunrise that morning was slated to be around 7:00 and you could really start to see some color fill the sky around 6:30.
The colors and the clouds that morning just set the stage for some great pictures. All I had to do was start snapping away.
Right when the sun starts to rise up over the desert then the real picture show starts to appear. And with the mountains out there as part of the backdrop it just creates some awesome images.
After I was done with the dead end spot I continued North on Sunrise Highway. The views just keep staying nothing but amazing.
This road is one of my favorites. It’s not a lot of slow speed, twisty stuff, mostly fast sweepers and good flowing corners.
The views are awesome everywhere you look, and with the sun still rising, you still get the plethora of colors and patterns filling the sky.
Every time I drive this car I understand more and more what sets it apart from it’s other competitors. It’s definitely not power, or speed. I also have a Focus ST and it has 32 more hp and feels noticeably quicker. This car does it with refinement. This car does it with beginning with a starting point and relentlessly refining it until you have the best version of it. You can feel it in many different aspects of this car. From the chassis, to the suspension, the gear shift, and even the way the door closes. It’s all been honed over time.
