Road Trip Report SF-Chicago

Hi All,

I just completed a cross country drive from Pleasant Hill, CA to Chicago IL in my new 2007 Prius. This is my second Prius, the first just recently being sold to a friend. I had no use for the HOV stickers in IL, so I decided to get a new one. The '05 also went on a road trip from SF-Chicago and back (a 10K trip) back in August of 05, so it must be some sort of tradition now. The back of the Prius was packed with whatever I couldn't fit in the moving crate, mostly pictures and clothes, but it was fairly heavy. Thank goodness for the backup camera, that made life easier.

Pictures can be viewed here.
We left Pleasant Hill around 7:30 in the AM June 28th and headed east. We decided to take the back roads, in fact after 680 and 580 at the beginning of the journey, we didn't hit the freeway for 1400 miles. The destination for the first day was Page, AZ, and we more or less took this route:

Day 1 Route

It was fairly warm through NV (90's), and we drove pretty fast. Mileage data: Tank 1: 39.1, Tank 2: 42.9, and Tank 3: 48.8. Lots of time with the battery spent in the purple range pulling up those steep mountain passes. We pulled into Page around 10:45, 800 miles later.

The next day, after a brief visit to the Glen Canyon Dam, we headed into the Navajo Nation and up through monument valley. I tried to get a couple of good shots of the Prius here. It was great driving out here, the LEOs were few and far between making it easy to cover a lot of distance in a short amount of time. We made it all the way to Limon, CO before seeing the Eisenhower Interstate System underneath the tires again, and to Goodland, KS for the night. Highlights of the day include every mile through CO that we had in the daylight (roughly to Canon City, CO), Monarch Pass, Telluride, US 50 through Gunnison and Montrose. I could spend days driving the prius out there.

Fuel Data Tank 4: 54.0 Tank 5: 38.1 (tanks don't exactly correspond to the day)
Day 2 map here.

Day 3 was fairly uneventful, I didn't even take a picture. We ended up in Springfield, IL at my dad's house around 10PM CDT after leaving KS around 9AM. The route was all interstate. There was some rain in Eastern Kansas that washed all the bug guts off the front of the car. Filled up the tank with some E10 in Springfield and the last tank data for that trip was 44.7.

On the final day, I headed up to Chicgao, a fairly uneventful drive for about 3.5 hours on old route 66, or rather I-55.

I love road trips, can't wait for another one in the Prius.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(FireEngineer @ Jul 7 2007, 04:34 PM) [snapback]474813[/snapback]</div>

I might be able to make it! The GF is working all day saturday so I might be free to come out!