Just finished road trip...map inside

Hi all,

My son and I just completed a road trip through the black hills and Yellowstone area. We drove our 2010 Prius that we purchased a few weeks ago. This is our first Prius and our first road trip in a Prius.

Here is a map with the approximate route :

• Yellowstone 2015

This route had MANY big hills to ascend and descend. The rout also had quite a bit of interstate driving with posted speeds of 70MPH ( in Minnesota ) and the dreaded 80 MPH ( in South Dakota and Wyoming ).

Some observations :

• Overall, I was super impressed with the car. Averaged around 52MPG (calculated) for the trip. Amazingly, we scored 60 MPG (calculated) on a run of 350 miles while going east out of Grand Teton national park ( lots of downhill and no headwind ) - the car said 63MPG.
• The 'power' mode really does have some power. I blew past a few trucks and big pickup trucks this way .
• The car had no trouble going over steep grades. The Bighorn mountains were a good test of this...especially going east (via Hwy 16) on the southern route. However, I did slow down a bit when going uphill if traffic allowed ( which was often ). There seemed to be a sweet spot of around 40-45 MPH or so where I could sometimes avoid going into power mode if the grade was not overly steep.
• As we all know, 80MPH interstate speeds have a detrimental effect on mileage, especially with a headwind. Of course, this is true of all cars due to increased wind resistance, etc...
• Interestingly, hardly anyone was going 80MPH! This may have been due to the headwind, etc...but it suprised me. Personally, I like the 70MPH max speed limit much better than 80MPH, even with non-hybrid car.
• With the 75th anniversary of the Sturgis motorcycle rally going on, the entire Sturgis/Rapid City area was an absolute zoo. There were huge bonfires going on, even during the day, not far from the interstate. You could see the smoke for miles. And of course, campers and motorcycles everywhere. Also lots of huge pickup trucks towing their motorcycles into Sturgis ( I still don't get why they just don't ride them there ). I'm glad we were going east on I90 on Sunday, Aug 2nd because the poor folks going west into Sturgis were backed up for at least 10 miles. They were routing westbound I90 traffic to a completely different road for some reason! Really bad timing on that one.
• Construction in Yellowstone was bad news. The road from Norris junction to Mammoth was completely torn up an was in terrible condition, with very little warning. We did it once and avoided it after that. Avoid that stretch of road at all costs this summer!
• Yellowstone was overrun with tourists ( as expected ). However, I was surprised at the number of foreign visitors. At times it seemed like we were the only English speaking folks around! Quite strange. There were a ton of Japanese and Chinese visitors in the park, many European visitors...and way too many tour buses. However, as usual, if you get off the main road onto any trail, you lose 99.9% of the people. I'd recommend Lone Star geyser if you have the time. WAY better than Old Faithful..but you have to work a bit to get there and may have to wait ( we waited 2 hours for it ). Due to the crowds, I'd recommend waiting until the end of August to visit Yellowstone. We have visited at that time twice before and the park is nearly empty compared to July.

And finally, a few pictures :

 

One word...Lone Star geyser. You have to hike a bit to get to it..and will most likely have to wait to see it ( bring a lunch ). Beautiful hike though. The path goes right along the river. It was really nice that the 'crowd' at the geyser was only about 20 or so compared to 100s over at Old Faithful!

Also note that the Lone Star trail is an old road, and is very wide. Because of that the park service also designated the trail as a bike path. I'd say 3/4 of the folks biked it. Apparently you can rent bikes from the lodge over at Old Faithful.

 

I agree. A friend of mine that owns a BMW motorcycle says I get better mileage than he does. However, he jokingly calls me 'one of those hyper-miler guys'.