road trip FE report

Just got back from my big holiday road trip - St. Paul, MN to Columbus, OH and back. Had two people, a ton of luggage, and a dog both directions. Some of the notes for the trip:

It was almost entirely (as much as possible with traffic) done using cruise control set to 10 mph over the posted speed limit (shaved over an hour off the trip time...). This meant 75mph for everything but Indiana, which was 80mph.

Driving down we averaged 43mpg over 2.5 tanks.

Driving back up, we finished off the second half of a tank, and another one, getting our 43mpg average. We then stopped near Madison, WI to refuel and eat dinner. This is where it gets interesting...

The station we happened to pull into had a big sign on the fuel pumps "100% gasoline! no Ethanol". I thought that was a bit odd (isn't every place using E10 now?), but whatever...

Well, if any of you know the area, the drive between the twin cities and Madison is rather hilly, and horrible for mileage when using cruise control. Despite that, however, we ended up getting to St. Paul with 49mpg on the display!


Granted, this was only half a tank and thus hardly conclusive, but i wasn't expecting to see a 6mpg jump between E10 and 100% gasoline. thats a 13% difference!

Any thoughts out there? (particularly of the "there's a 100% gasoline station at such and such a location in the twin cities...)