Las Vegas was a trial…finding a gas station that could accept my truck AND trailer…we ended up driving all the way to Kingman on that tank!
Speaking of gas, this trip has been…weird? Phenomenal? Our first tank, from Great Falls to rocker we got 8.2MPG. That is really good, particularly pulling the trailer through the mountains! From Rocker to Idaho Falls we got 9.2, close to the best ever with the trailer attached! Then Idaho Falls to North Salt Lake City we got 9.2 again! Through SLC to Fillmore, UT, we got 8.8MPG. Fillmore to Saint George was 9.1! And from Saint George to Kingman was 9.2 again! Then we made a 65 mile side trip sans trailer and we got 17MPG, which is pretty good for a winding mountain uphill road!
I think the secret has been to rigorously keep the transmission in fourth gear (Overdrive) while driving (it doesn’t work going up most hills…). Mostly this is 55-60MPH, but through SLC it was 65MPH! I think the other traffic caused a slipstream so we were drafting them. With a headwind we were lucky to keep going at 50MPH. Here is a air resistance chart I found. Going from 50MPH to 60 almost doubles the resistance; from 60 to 80 MORE than doubles it! And while that additional one to two MPG doesn’t sound like much, when it is up to 25% of your overall mileage, that is a lot!
If you have not driven south from Las Vegas in the last 20 years you will not recognize the roads at all. From Vegas to Hoover Dam is the newest Interstate, I11! All of the towns and casinos have been bypassed and replaced with beautiful four lane roads.
Here is the rapidly drying up Lake Mead.
Then it was across the bridge built to bypass Hoover Dam after 9/11, that you can’t see any views from (especially the Dam!) and into Arizona! Again!
This country is incredibly rugged, and looks harsher every time I see it!
That is the Colorado River down there…in WW2 some people worried that a U-Boat<?> could come up it <??> and torpedo Hoover Dam <???>…or something…they built four camouflaged pillboxes for machine guns to guard the dam! One still exists, but vandals caused it to be closed to the public.
Well, we made it through to Kingman, got our room, dropped the trailer and headed out on a small adventure!
Oatman, here we come!
(All photos are by the Dailylife Wife!)
~Curtis in Utah, Nevada and /\rizona! {!-{>
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