The Drive – Wests Go West

Crunching the Numbers: The Drive

Marie — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:58:22 +0000

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.

Lots of fruit trees and fruit stands

Marie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:32:17 +0000

Just past Wenatchee now.

Almost to Wenatchee, WA

Marie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:04:17 +0000

Just entered Washington!

Marie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:10:15 +0000

Leaving Montana, entering Idaho

Marie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:00:20 +0000

This morning’s breakfast.

Nick — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:57:33 +0000

Let’s see how tomorrow’s compares. (Forgot to make this post this morning).

Night three – Butte Montana

Nick — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:53:06 +0000

So as the price of hotel rooms goes up apparently the quality goes down. This is our third Comfort Inn and the first one (in Albert Lea MN) was awesome. Nice and newish, clean, super friendly staff, and awesome shower. Second one (Gillette WY) was OK, but staff was less friendly and the breakfast quality was lacking compared to the first. And now… this place is old; our smoke free room smells of smoke, the beds are not so great and we were assaulted by an army of mosquitos in the parking lot. Hopefully the breakfast won’t be as bad as I am expecting.

Tomorrow we leave early and drive hard. Hopefully we’ll be at the cabin before 7pm. Can’t wait to have a break from driving. Also, somehow our smart car got 50.2mpg while on mountainous country roads. Not sure if it was the lower speeds or the fact that I had the air off, but wow.

Sunset in Montana

Marie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:18:35 +0000

Please pardon the bug-splattered windshield lol.

Bye bye, Yellowstone!

Marie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 01:49:00 +0000

In total, we saw 9 buffalo, 1-2 elk, 1 moose, 0 bears, and 1 DOUBLE RAINBOW. So intense! I’m very excited that we saw so many buffalo. <3

We’re headed to Butte, MT for the night. We’re going to have to get up early in the morning for the last day of the trip.

Old Faithful

Marie — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 23:59:40 +0000

Yellowstone is beautiful. We have seen five buffalo so far – I am SO geeked! We got to Old Faithful with perfect timing. It erupted about two minutes after we arrived and the next eruption was predicted to be 1.5 hours later. We are now eating fish and chips at the Old Faithful lodge cafeteria and planning the rest of the day’s trip.