One with the Road

After the long cold winter in upstate New York, the ‘07 Vette is out of storage and back on the road again. This weekend we are trekking to Saratoga Springs, NY to help celebrate the victory of our friend Scott Murphy who was recently elected to the United States House of Representatives. Many congratulations to Scott!

It probably won’t happen until next summer, but FYI, we have started to plan our next major road trip for the Corvette which will take a route through the northern states of the US and southern Providences of Canada. The destination is Anchorage, Alaska….or at least that is the current thinking. This trip would be about 4,300 miles of driving and then we would ferry the car via water back to Vancouver, British Columbia. From there we would drive down to Seattle, Washington and have the option of driving car back home….or trucking it I suppose.

A grand route might look something like this:

1. West across to New York into Canada near Buffalo, NY
2. Across Ontario Canada north of Lake Erie and into Michigan
3. Up North through Michigan using the Mackinaw Bridge
4. Along the Northern border of Wisconsin to Minnesota
5. Across Minnesota to North Dakota (Jeff’s 49th state)
6. Out the North West corner of ND to Saskatchewan
7. Shoot across Saskatchewan from Regina to Calgary, Alberta
8. North through Alberta via Edmonton to Northern British Columbia
9. Across BC to the Yukon and then onto Alaska (Jeff’s 50th state)
10. From Anchorage the Alaska Marine Highway can get you down to Vancouver
11. Once in Vancouver (driving again) down to Seattle, Washington
12. East out of Seattle across northern Idaho and into Montana
13. South from Helena, MT back into Idaho and down into Utah
14. Through Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois
15. Bowling Green, KY (Corvette Plant and NCM)
16. Ohio, PA, and back home to NY.

These are just the basic ideas at this point. The plan needs lots more work and time/locations trade-off analysis. Additionally, some research is needed to see what the risks are to car damage on the roads of the great white north.

In the mean time, you can check out the story of our Summer 2008 road trip.

[Edit on 01/01/2009 - This post was the final summary post of our Great American Road Trip - 2008. For the start of the whole real story click here or the single most popular (and syndicated!) post click here].

To accomodate getting home on time for a set of family commitments, we had to make some late changes to the original schedule of the last few planned days of the trip. So, from St. Louis, MO, we made our way across Illinois and Indiana on US-50 to Cincinnati, OH to crash for the night with Jeff’s brother Adam and his family. From there, we headed back home to Rochester via one more stop in Pleasantville (Medina, OH).

The drive on US-50 was a good country drive across Illinois with lots of rolling hills of corn fields and the drive through the mountains across the center of Indiana was cool as well. While some of the driving from Cincinnati on home was via US-22, most it was on Interstate I-71 and I-90 to make it back home in time.

Some statistics of the trip

• Days on the road = 28
• Total Miles Driven by car = 8026
• Total Miles Driven by Jeff = 8026
• Total Miles accounted for on the Map = 7431
• Net Overhead miles = 595 (8%)
• Gallons of Fuel Used = 294.1
• Average Speed = 49 mph when car on
• Average Speed = 12 mph including sleeping
• Highest Speed Recorded = 110 mph
• Average Cost of Fuel = $4.38/gallon
• Average Fuel Usage = 27.3 mpg
• Highest Price of Gasoline Paid = $4.99/gallon in Crescent City, CA*
• Lowest Price of Gasoline Paid = $3.90/gallon in Jackson, NE*
• 60 unique blog readers per day (average)
• 126 unique visitors per day (peak)
• 23 unique visitors per day (minimum)
• Most popular article – I Peed In Montana (only article syndicated to other sites)

While this concludes the road trip portion of our journey, we’ll follow up this article with two more planned articles. First will be a summary of the trip noting the what we remember to be the best of the best, the disappointing and maybe some thoughts about a what worked and didn’t in case you want to plan your own road trip. The second article will be a review of the Corvette from a road tripping perspective.

Side notes:

• On the gasoline high and low prices. Not all gasoline was the same. We always bought the highest octane fuel available and tried to avoid stuff with Ethanol blends. The Corvette has a recommended minimum octane requirement of 91 and a maximum Ethanol content limit of 10% (E10 fuel). Many places out west we only had the option of E10. Additionally, we are used to buying 93 octane or 94 octane for the Corvette. Out west, basically the best you can buy anywhere is 91 octane and many more rural areas the “premium” fuel was 89 octane with the other choices being 85 and 87. When this was the case, we tried mixing in as little of the crappy stuff into the tank as possible. The cheapest stuff in NE was E10 with an octane rating of 89. The most expensive stuff in CA was 91 octane and also E10. You definately get lower fuel economy with E10 as it is a lower energy content fuel by volume.
• Unfortunately, as a result of running out of time, we did not make it to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY as originally planned which I’m sure many of our fellow Corvette Enthusiasts following along would have enjoyed hearing about. Since we have been there before, we can say with confidence that it is certainly a worthwhile place to visit anytime you happen to be in the area. Both the Corvette plant tour (across the road) and the museum are excellent. We’ll definately go there again on a future road trip.

We started out the day in Tulsa, OK and made our way along the last remaining remnants of the Oklahoma road sections up in the north east corner of the state. One key landmark to see here is the famous Blue Whale swimming hole.

Blue Whale in Catoosa, OK

This old Route 66 family attraction fell into disrepair over the years, but was relatively recently restored by a family group of volunteers. The Blue Whale is actually a themed decoration of a swimmer’s dock out into the pond using the side fins as slides into the water and the tail of the whale as a diving platform. While this is all sort of the epitome of classic Route 66 cheesiness, this particular item is actually pretty cleverly designed to serve its functional purpose and you can imagine the fun kids travelling along the old road must have had here over the years.

Kansas Route 66

From Oklahoma, while I-44 goes straight into Missouri, the old road actually follows through the corner of the state of Kansas. The Kansas sections of the road, while mostly replaced with a modern road SR-66, there are good signs to point the way to abandoned road sections that can still be driven….sometimes dead ending into failing bridges or overgrown pavement sections that can no longer be accessed by car. We did seek out an original 1923 vintage Route 66 “rainbow” bridge that can still be driven by car – although with some reluctance by Jeff who was almost inclined to inspect the underside of the bridge before deciding to trust the 5 ton weight limit signage as valid.

Rainbow Bridge KS-MO Border

Full Bridge View

Once crossing this bridge, you are basically at the Kansas – Missouri border where the newer Kansas SR-66 turns into Missouri SR-66 so you can make your way over to Joplin, MO and onto I-44. In Missouri there are very few original sections of Route 66 still in existence so, atypical for our journey, we remained on the Interstate all the way up to St. Louis to allow for the maximum time being spent at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park later in the day. This park, otherwise known as the St. Louis Gateway Arch, is of course one of the major tourist attractions of the area and can be seen from miles away from pretty much anywhere in St. Louis where there is a decent outside view.

Pathway to the Arch

We made our way from the Riverside parking area through the Arch park and up to the base of the Arch itself. Both of us had seen the Arch from afar in the past, but this is the first time we actually dedicated the time to make a visit.

From the Base of the Arch

While an impressive sight at over 600 feet tall, to two ends of the Arch are closer together at the base than we had imagined. Looking to get the whole experience of the park we opted to take both a Mississippi River Boat tour to view the Arch and the city from the river and also take the tram ride up inside Arch to take a peek out of the windows at the top.

Tom Sawyer Mississippi Riverboat

St. Louis as viewed from Mississippi

Another Shot of the Arch

Pretty damn cool spot actually, and we both enjoyed the views from the riverboat and from the Arch even though it turned out to be a very long day by the time we made it back to the hotel and were able to crash for the night.

The historical Route 66 road continued from St. Louis and did not end until reaching Chicago, but the quantity and quality of authentic road sections still in existence dwindles greatly from here to the end of the road…..too much so to justify closing the loop back to Chicago. Not to mention, Chicago was already covered on this trip, so our travels here on Route 66 come to an end. Thank You Route 66, we had a blast getting to know you better.

Tomorrow we take US-50 out of St. Louis, MO through southern Illinois and Indiana straight to Cincinnati, OH for an overnight stay with Jeff’s brother Adam.