I love not being lowered. I've had lowered cars before and I tell ya... being able to drive my Subie without worrying about things in the road, dips/divots/roadkill, whatever, I absolutely love it. I live 2 miles out in the woods too, up down, curvy road... and in the winter, the extra clearance is awesome. I have pictures of me plowing the driveway out when we had NEMO this past winter. I did get it stuck in a 4' x 4' snowbank at the end of my driveway, but up until that point, she was rockin' and rollin' ! I just got so much snow UNDER the car, it lifted the suspension to a point where I couldn't move and I had to manually dig out.