I'm going from North dakota to Louisiana...Any tips prius wise? I have my tires are 42/40. I'm going to have about 200lbs in the car also...should I even out the tire pressure? I'm a little nervous, Driving this little car in north dakota on windy days is hell!
Let us know how it goes. I will driving from B C down to California via Salt Lake City route and returning via the Oregon & Washington coast late this summer for vacation.
I take the Prius on harsher and longer trips more often and there is nothing to worry about. Just beware of the speed trap areas.
I've driven 500 miles in 8 hours 5 times already with nary a care at 48 mpg. what else could you want? perhaps using the best synthetic oil and a good oil filter. Our race cars have done very well on Mobil 1 and Fram filters at speeds nearly as much as 200 mph for hours at a time with NO engine problems and all the street cars we service say the same. we do change oil and filters every 5000 miles though; this old engineer just can't handle 10k change intervals. We've opened too many filters and tested pressure drops to go that long. Its probably OK as Mobil says it can be done but we just don't.
My advice would be don't do it alone. 1000 miles is about 15 hours straight driving? That's some sleepy driving.
Does impact over all travel time but stop and get out of the car ever two hours to walk or just stretch. Started doing this when my kids were younger and needed to stop more frequently but have kept the 2 hour break tradition.
Just did something similar on the weekend. 1070 miles down and the same back. The car handled it better than I did. Good tunes and some stories will help.
Ditto on some good audio books. I have done these kind of trips. There are tips on fighting fatigue online. Be careful on how your mind can play tricks with you. I was on a Fla to California solo trip and while passing through Texas at 2am I spotted an armadillo crossing the freeway. I turned around to try and find him because I thought; "It would be really cool to pick him up, tame him down, and take him for walks on the beach". I pulled over and took an extended nap after I mulled over the logic of that line of thinking.
On a trip back from Vegas, I saw mushrooms on top of cars. I wondered why some mushrooms were angry and some were not. I punched my friend sitting next to me and yelled at him for allowing me to see mushrooms instead of keeping me awake.
This was almost 1000 over two days. I'll be doing a Florida to NJ drive (and back) in two months, so 1,000 each way (straight through). Should be exciting! The car handled it extremely well. I used to use my gas stops as stretching times too but I only had to fill up twice during this trip, and the first time I still had 100 miles or so I could go but was getting into somewhere I wasn't familiar with and didn't want to chance gas stations. I know the average speed is 43, probably because 4 of the hours were 45 or under. The rest was going 60 or 70mph on highways. I was very impressed, and I hope I get the same mileage to NJ! As a note: Any tips on good gas stations? The Shell gas I put in seemed fantastic. The Chevron gas ("with Techron") seemed to run worse on the mpg.
Pack a cooler. Bring a USB stick full of tunes (or ipod...phone...etc). Pick an audiobook or two. Watch trip summary screen for cruising range estimate to plan gas. Have fun.
In the immortal words of Nancy Reagan "Just say no". Truck drivers can't. You shouldn't. Once you have driven a total of 11 hours, you have reached the driving limit and must be off duty for another 10 consecutive hours before driving your truck again. http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/truck/driver/hos/fmcsa-guide-to-hos.PDF A long long time ago I drove an Audi GT from Boston to New Orleans. The car was basically brand new - I was driving like a bat out of hell - really pushing it. And there is was, sitting in the grass on the divider - a state cruiser. I saw the blue dome light. I saw the headlights cutting across the road. I was toast. A Yankee in the South pushing the triple digits. Great. Nailed the brakes. Got closer. Waiting for the lights to go on. They didn't. It was some sort of blue reflector. I was hallucinating. I had been gobbling No-Doz and drinking Diet Coke to stay awake for far too long. I saw a rig pulled off the road - presumably sleeping. I pulled in front of it (errant drivers would have to drive through it first before they hit me), cut the engine and fell into an oblivious sleep. The next morning the rig was gone. I arrived alive. Once was enough.
I saw little fairy sprite things dart into the road from the side of the highway while driving through middle of nowhere Pennsylvania (it's a very wide state) at 3am. Fortunately a wild rest stop appeared (which wasn't an hallucination) not long after my invisible friends started showing up.
