Our cars, Gunter and Scapers

Nerd Alert! Number crunching results below!

I love spreadsheets. I use them all the time for everything from keeping track of gas purchases to seasonal event achievements in World of Warcraft. Really. I have gas purchase logs going back to 2004 that document mileage, gallons, and price so that I can track my miles per gallon and price trends.

I finally got around to entering the data from the 4-day Michigan to Washington drive today. Here are some interesting tidbits:

• 2490 total miles (approximately) – Side note: My gas receipts end in Cashmere, WA with 2380mi, so I added Google Map’s estimate of 110mi from there to the cabin, where the trip actually ended. All other statistics below will consider Cashmere, WA as the ending point of the trip.
• Just over $600 for gas
• 38.8 average mpg for the Smart Car (Gunter) and 23.3 average mpg for the Escape (Scapers)
• Halfway through our trip (approximately at the South Dakota/Wyoming border) marked a significant change in mpg. 36.1 average mpg (first half) and 41.8 average mpg (second half) for Gunter. 21.7 average mpg (first half) and 25.0 mpg (second half) for Scapers.

It’s particularly interesting how the mpg increased on the second half of the trip, especially considering that that’s when we started encountering mountains. Weird!

Another interesting trend is that as we drove out west, the quality of the Comfort Inn hotels we stayed at went down and the price went up. Go figure. 😛