Lessons Learned on our 4572 mile trip

We just returned from our road trip. We left the SF Bay Area on Friday, June 24 heading up through Sacramento and then onto I80 across Nevada and Utah. When we hit the salt flats in Utah something got ahold of my husband and he took the Prius up to 107 mph. Probably could have gotten better but we had the two of us plus luggage and coolers and books and laptops and a fully loaded backpack complete with tent, sleeping bag (1) and food for one week. Why the loaded backpack? Who knows?! Just never know when the opportunity for a backpacking trip will present itself, I guess.
Drove through Colorado and across the Great Divide twice. Then into Estes Park, Colorado Springs, Denver, back to Estes Park, and then to Boulder before heading back West. Took a left and went back through Utah and Arches National Park before heading down to Prescott, AZ. Then back North through Grand Canyon and around to Lake Powell. Should have stopped for gas there but forgot and we ran out of gas in southern Utah 23 miles from the nearest town. Won't point any fingers, but I wasn't driving. Got lots of interesting messages as the Prius complained. By the way, we have renamed her Priscilla as she can get rather prissy sometimes - like when we don't follow her directions exactly. We got quite lucky in that a passing refrigeration van passed by and stopped to help. They offered us a ride into town as it was 108 degrees and no shade to be found. As we were driving down the road sitting on boxes in the rear of the van (could have been an open pickup truck full of chickens!), we saw a highway patrol car approach and turn on his lights. Uh, oh, they were doing 80mph on a 65mph road. Well, the guys explained the situation to the patrolman. He asked if there were any seatbelts back there......Uh, oh, again. Fortunately, he was is a good mood or just a really nice guy because he just gave the guys a warning and put us into his air conditioned car and drove us himself to the gas station and back to our car. So we were out about an hour of travel time. I had read other's reports on restarting the car after running out of gas so I knew what to expect. After several start-ups, the bad lights finally went out and we were on our way. However, that last pesky blinking bar continued to blink all the was back into town even though we had put in 5 gallons. After we reached the station and finished fuelling, it slowwwwly changed - bar by bar.
Next day we were back on the road to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. When we left Zion, it was 118 degrees outside. We headed toward Las Vegas but just skirted the North side before heading Northwest to a little town called Beatty, NV. We wanted to get as close to Death Valley as possible to get an early start. Well, after the adventures of the day before, we were much more conservative on our gas estimates and bought more often. We came to realize that not all towns marked on the map are large enough to have a gas station.
So we drove across Death Valley, up to Mammoth Lake, into and through Yosemite and then home. Whewww! 3 weeks and we didn't kill each other!

Stats: 4572 miles driven
Cost $230.06 or .05 / mile
Gallons purchased 96.266
Trip average 47.49 mpg

We are quite happy with the way Priscilla handled all the mountains and deserts. We were in dramatic elevation changes every day and saw a lot of 1 pink bar readouts. Saw a lot of full green ones, too.

We did have to get the oil changed in Prescott, AZ. That contributed to our running out of gas. Really! We had to reset the Maint. Req'd light ourselves and having never done it before, managed to reset the trip meter along the way so when we ran out of gas, we had at least 100 more miles on the tank than it showed and my husband forgot to take that into his estimation. Plus, I had dropped and totally broken my Palm the day before and so didn't have the info on the last fill-up. It was all by guess - plus he just plain forgot that I told him we needed to fill up in Page. :?

I was nervous about taking such a long trip in the Prius but there was no need. Handled beautifully, took all those mountains with barely a complaint and did it in a clean, expensive way. BTW, the most we paid for gas was 2.84 but did see it as high as 3.01 in Yosemite. The least we paid was 2.04. Prices here in the Bay area are back to 2.54.

The biggest lesson learned is : Don't play 'Chicken" with the gas gauge in the middle of Utah. But if you do, God does send angels to get your sorry a** out of trouble.

Oh, yeah, the other lesson is - remind your son to not let the dishes sit in the sink for 3 weeks. Strange things grow in that time - especially in the bottom layer. ukeright: