1st big trip in the Prime

I know what you mean about the big cities. The midwest, the Rockies, and the desert were incredibly relaxing. Denver, Memphis? Not so much.

@Raytheeagle, here are some eye candy examples. No Griswald moments.


Flowers along the 1.5 mile hiking trail to old Fort Bowie, AZ.


Scene from cemetery along the trail to Ft. Bowie.


Part of the remains of Ft. Bowie, AZ.


At Mesa Verde National Park.


On the way from Mesa Verde to Delta, I saw what might be a backdrop for a Coors commercial.


On Grand Mesa, CO. It was going down the north side of this that charged the battery to 98%.


Rest area on I-70 near Vail Pass. It started snowing a little as we were visiting with a couple from British Columbia. One of the fun parts was meeting strangers and getting to know their stories a little bit. BTW, no paper towels and no electricity for the air dryers. No problem, though because the water was also not working. So I washed in the snow and dried my cold hands on my jeans. LOL!!


View from the front door of our hosts' home in Broomfield, CO. I went to high school here and it's where we lived when we were first married. It's wonderful to still have some of our friends from those days.


On Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. This is as far as the road was opened yet. Snow was more than 10' deep along much of the road. Good news after the drought that they've been having.


We stopped for milkshakes at this very cool soda fountain in Chugwater, WY as we neared our next stop at our friends' home on Iowa Flats up above Chugwater.


The nasty storms always seemed to just miss us. This was from our friends' house above Chugwater. Nebraska had some tornados later that night. This looked like it might have spawned one of them.

Oh, I just remembered something that I keep forgetting to mention about the car. I was amazed at all the compliments. Almost every one we talked to complimented it. And it seemed to be a rare breed. I saw either three or four other Primes. (One might have been the same car twice.) Only one was red like ours.

 

You folks have some insane prices there. Not just for gas, either.

I love the look on people's faces when I tell them I only spent $303 on gas to drive over 6,000 miles. I can almost hear the gears grinding as they work it out and compare it to what they'd pay in their Ford Expeditions.

 

Thanks, John. We did have a great trip. I'm ready to do it again.

 

Now that's funny right there. We have friends here in the armpit of North America who have been deprived of the excitement of dealing with such amazing scenery and weather. When I was in college, I bicycled over Trail Ridge with two friends on our way from Denver to the west coast. What an adventure!!

Thanks for the cool video. I'll need to share that with my wimpy FL friends on Facebook and with my nephew who drives a snow plow in Iowa. He'll love it.

Yikes! The highest price we paid on this trip was $3.999 in New Mexico along I-10. I don't think anything else was over $3.

 

We also use Gas Buddy. That expensive one was at 5:30 AM out in the middle of "Nowhere, NM" so we figured we should get it anyway.

Always good to avoid THOSE prices. Our longest tank of the trip was 604 miles with a 4,000 foot net elevation gain. Since so much of it was twisty mountain roads with lots of EV thanks to the ups and downs, we got almost 59 mpg calculated at the pump. I was starting to sweat a little because we were so far past zero range indicated. I knew in my head that it would go that far, but the first time out in the sticks where it's over 100 miles from the last gas station is a little tense. LOL! Theoretically, there was still one more gallon left in the tank. We had two other 500+ mile tanks, both well over 60 mpg and both in the Rockies. As I mentioned earlier, this car loves the mountains!! Here's the whole trip plus the fill-up the day before we left. (Which happened to be my first fill-up since the initial top-off when I got the car March 8.


So, before we left, my "lifetime" mpg was close to 400. (I reset it when I got the car.) Now, it's showing 67.1. It's gonna take a while to bring that back up.

That's a possibility. I've also noticed that if I have the tires really pumped up, like 40 psi or more, the steering is more touchy.

 

Those f you who were paying attention to the weather, may have noticed that we threaded the needle with all the storms. We dodged tornadoes and snowstorms. I just found out that we dodged something else.
Colorado highway closed 'indefinitely' after massive boulders smash roadway | Fox News
We went right up this road a week and a half before that boulder destroyed it. Wow.

 

Besides the crack in the acrylic from the roadrunner in TX and the scrapes on the fender & hood from the flying tire in CO, my Prime now also sports a boatload of stone chips. A few are on the hood, but most are on the leading edge of the roof. I can't overstate how glad I am that none of that debris cracked the windshield. The friend I mentioned with the '17 four is driving with a huge crack right now. He doesn't want to replace it right now since he said he's cracked several windshields on the highway he's been driving to see their daughter. He said when the situation causing the frequent trips on that highway is resolved, THEN he'll replace it again.

I try to take the attitude 'Mater had in Cars 2 when the British spies wanted to remove his dents.

Scars aren't necessarily a bad thing. (But broken windshields are.)