July Challenge - Day 2

Before departing for Day 2, I filled the tank in Gainesville to correlate the ScanGauge to actual consumption. The total miles travelled was 163.9 miles with 4.062 gallons added back to the tank - resulting in 40.35 mpg for the day.

After leaving the sunshine state, the trip started well. I stopped in Macon, GA for lunch and the facilities and had the first gauge reading shown to the right - 42.1 mpg for this leg of 267.3 miles. I was really getting familiar with the car and the results showed. Then the bottom fell out when I arrived in Atlanta, GA. Unfortunately, I didn't get there until almost 3:30pm local time and there was an accident on I75 about 10 miles south of the I285 loop - leaving stop and go traffic for a few miles. That delay had me driving through downtown in the middle of rush hour, with 2 more spots of congestion that I had to wait through. A great afternoon for no air conditioning!!

For anybody that thought this was not going to be real life enough, you can see the affects of the stop and go (idling) traffic. I stopped to fill the tank just outside of Chattanooga,TN (before the mountains). The total miles travelled was 469.7 miles with 12.505 gallons added back to the tank - resulting in 37.56 mpg for the tank. Miserable considering the first half results to Macon, GA.

To make things a little more interesting, there was a heavy downpour of rain from Chattanooga to Nashville, TN. For safety, this limited my downhill coasting speeds dramatically in the mountains unfortunately. The roads were in good condition with fairly new blacktop so puddles of water weren't a big problem, but it was now after dark and the rain made it very difficult to judge road inclines. As real life as you can get!

When I pulled into Nashville, you can see the results for the final leg of 40.2 mpg. Not bad considering the mountains. Now on to Chicago.

Day 3 will take me through Louisville, Indianapolis, and finally Chicago.