Road Trip Final Thoughts

From California, we crossed 10 states before arriving in Ohio 8 days later.


My favorite to least favorite state:

1. Wyoming - spent more time in Wyoming than any other state during the trip. Yellowstone and Grand Teton are amazing.
   
2. Illinois - Chicago alone is enough to push Obama-land up to #2.
   
3. Montana - if I didn't bury my swim trunks deep in my car, I would've gone for a dip in the river by a hot spring too
   
4. South Dakota - Mt. Rushmore is cool, Corn Palace is funky. Other than that, just I-90 and a lot of hay
   
5. Idaho - can't say much about Idaho... barely inched into Idaho for a grand total of less than 10 minutes on the freeway
   
6. Utah - Mormon country = everything is closed on Sunday. I want my Hire Big H root beer float!
   
7. Wisconsin - don't remember much about Wisconsin other than the big people at Burger King
   
8. Minnesota - drove right across Minnesota. Lots of wind mills?
   
9. Nevada - lots of desert and flat plains. boooooorrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg
   
10. Indiana - the only gas station I stopped by had huge pot holes and gravel roads. Bathroom was nasty. Didn't make a very good impression, Indiana.

We averaged a nice and leisurely pace of less than 400 miles a day, with the biggest chunk of driving on the first day from San Jose to Salt Lake City (768 miles):


As expected, most of the cost from the trip went to lodging and fuel:

Other random notes:

• The Valentine 1 did a good job picking up the highway patrol... all 5 or so of them we ran into over the course of the trip. It sets off some false alarms, as expected. It's a useful tool if you understand its limitations - it's NOT a cop detector; it's a RADAR detector. And it's not a license to drive like an idiot.
• We didn't exceed 100mph - not even once!
• People are not very big on toilet seat covers outside of California - protection is NOT provided by the management
• The mountain states sure like their fireworks! We thought about picking some up for kicks, but putting that inside a car next to the gasoline canister is probably not the wisest thing to do.
• Your car WILL get dirty inside and out. You WILL find random things in the most random places in your for weeks after the trip. Deal with it.
  

Fuel mileage kind of stinks, but that's to be expected with a roof rack, packed car and crossing the Rockies and its 10,000ft elevation.

Would i do it again? Absolutely, but not for a couple of years. And not with my car. I'd like to do a 3 to 4 day sightseeing drive in a convertible next. Down the east coast, maybe?

Miles driven: 3,010
Gallons of fuel consumed: 133.626
Average fuel economy: 22.525
Average price per gallon (premium): $4.04