NavList:

This is a summary of my 61 day trip.

I drove a 2006 BMW 330i for 11, 085 miles, burning 412.585 US gallons of premium gas which cost $1,717.17, obtaining an average of 26.87 mpg and a cost of fuel per mile of  15.5 cents. The fuel economy when measured on the last 732 mile leg from Salt Lake City to home of almost all freeway driving was 28.27 mpg.  The highest cost for gas was in Quebec where it was $1.42 per liter and the next highest was back here in California where I paid $4.77 when I got back. Just three days previously I had paid only $3.99 in Nebraska. The average cost for the fuel was $4.16. We left on May 2nd and got home on July 1st and the price gradually went up during the trip. The price stayed below $4.00 until we reached Virginia on May 26th. The highest speed recorded on the GPS was 109 mph in Texas. On the freeways  I normally cruised at 80 which resulted in an average of about 70 mph. Overall, including city driving, I averaged about 62 mph. I stayed in hotels 43 nights and with friends for 17 nights. The total cost of hotels was $4,065.99 for an average cost per night spent in a hotel of $95.56. I saved over $1,500 by staying with friends along the way. The average cost per day for hotels, fuel, and food and entertainment for two was $241.

I had two GPS's going, the one built into the car and a Garmin Street Pilot c320. The memory card for the Garmin is one gigabyte and contains the entire US and Canada (how do they do it?) Both GPS's speak with female voices and we had named the BMW GPS "Betty" (short for "Bitching Betty") a long time ago. The Garmin, which speaks with an English accent we had named "Elizabeth." (you find yourself talking to them) The "girls" would often disagree on the routing, Betty would try to take us hundreds of miles out of our way to keep us on freeways while Elizabeth would usually figure out a shorter routing. We were always happy when the girls would agree on a route. (Don't attempt to drive around Boston without a GPS!)
We had planned to make a clockwise circle around the states from southern California up the west coast as far as Vancouver but the week before we left they got about a foot of snow in Seattle so we decided to reverse our route and go counter clockwise. We stayed in the following cities, some for two days, 3 days in New Orleans, Peoria and Chicago. We also spent 4 days in New York city.

Palm Springs, CA
Phoenix, AZ
Flagstaff, AZ
Durango, CO
Santa Fe, NM
Carlsbad, NM
Del Rio, TX
San Antonio, TX
Austin, TX
Houston, TX
New Orleans, LA
Biloxi, MS
Tallahassee, FL
Savannah, GA
Charleston, SC
Raleigh, NC
Williamsberg, VA
Richmond, VA
Arlington, VA
Aberdeen, MD
Philadelphia, PA
New York, NY
Mystic, CN
Newport, RI
Hyannis, MA
East Dennison, MA
Boston, MA
Quebec City, QE
Montreal, QE
Niagara Falls, NY
Springfield, OH
Peoria, IL
Chicago, IL
Green Bay, WI
Milwaukee, WI
Omaha, NB
Denver, CO
Glenwood Springs, CO
Salt Lake City, UT
Las Vegas, NV

We drove through 31 states plus the District of Columbia and Quebec. I have now been in all the states with the one exception of Alaska.


gl

Dan Allen wrote:

On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 6:42 PM, <glapook@pacbell.net> wrote:

I just spent 61 days driving a complete circle around the United
States in May and June, putting 11,089 miles on the car and using my
MB-2A flight computer to figure ETAs for each day's destinations.

That is very cool!  I did a complete 48 state trip in April of 2000.  I did it in 24 days, driving 11,500 miles.  I used a Garmin GPS but I will have to do it again, take a bit longer, and do artificial horizon sights with one of my sextants along the way next time!

<http://danallen46.homeunix.org/Lower48.htm> has the stats from my trip.

Dan

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