We just completed a month-long road trip covering 26 days, 7 states, 4457 miles, and several bucket list items checked off. Months of planning were involved, and after the fact, there is always laundry and catching up on other things. Not to mention the roughly 3,500 photos I need to edit.
I’ve kept mileage records for my cars since August 2014, first as a business log; more recently as a record for curiosity. I paid as little as $1.979/gal at Costco in February 2015, and as high as $5.559/gal in July of 2022 (excluding road trips and reward points). The highest I’ve ever paid for gas is $6.09/gal as we moved from Washington to Arizona at a station in Wikieup, AZ.
For this trip, I kept a trip log not only with gas prices but with mileage between some of the stops. I didn’t log every stop we made or the time we landed there, but some of the major stops were:
Mesa to Flagstaff, AZ – 176 miles
Flagstaff to Seligman, AZ – 75 miles
Seligman to Kingman, AZ – 85 miles
Kingman AZ to Needles, CA – 62 miles
Day 1 – 398 miles, 10 hours
Needles to Marina Del Ray, CA – 353 miles
Santa Monica to Monterey, CA – 216 miles
Monterey, CA to Grants Pass, OR – 552 miles
Grants Pass, OR to Redmond, WA – 465 miles
Redmond, WA to Boise, ID – 503 miles
Boise, ID to West Valley City, UT – 456 miles
West Valley City, UT to Flagstaff, AZ – 539 miles
Driving time was between 6 and 9 hours a day because it’s a road trip and there were numerous camera, bathroom, tourist, and food stops!
I expected we would see some fairly high gas prices as we hit California, but for the most part, prices stayed below $6 even in Monterey and Santa Monica, CA. We planned on buying at Costco when we could to save a few pennies, but in most cases we purchased at regular gas stations with no rewards or discounts.
Date MPG Miles/Tank Gallons Price Notes
9/3/2023 20.66078 227 10.987 4.369 Costco Mesa AZ
9/4/2023 24.8282 336 13.533 4.899 Kingman AZ
9/6/2023 25.4596 421 16.536 5.199 Santa Monica CA
9/7/2023 26.60092 410 15.413 5.499 Monterey CA
9/7/2023 34.79304 348 10.002 4.999 Redding CA
9/8/2023 27.687 305 11.016 4.539 Oakland OR (Rice Hill)
9/9/2023 19.73982 349 17.68 4.759 Costco Redmond WA
9/15/2023 23.95137 394 16.45 4.799 Marathon Lacey WA
9/26/2023 17.61252 225 12.775 4.799 Costco Redmond
9/26/2023 25.81806 445 17.236 4.499 Loves Ontario OR
9/28/2023 25.54095 373 14.604 4.599 Arimo ID
9/29/2023 25.39208 340 13.39 4.699 Beaver UT
9/30/2023 24.75775 511 20.64 4.599 Costco Mesa AZ
As you can see, our mileage averaged right around 24/25 mpg, although the trip meter in the car averaged 26.5 mpg. With a 22-gallon tank, we tried to fill up when the tank hit 1/4, to avoid paying emergency prices at some station in the middle of nowhere. Even though we were fortunate (due to planning) not to pay high prices, there were several stations along the trip where we saw as high as $7.99/gal! Sinclair and Maverick had the most consistent pricing; surprisingly Shell, Chevron, and Union76 weren’t always the most expensive on the road. Love’s Truck Stops were either painfully high or right in line with Sinclair and Maverick.
Road trips are fantastic for conversations to while away the miles, and this trip was filled with several doozies. We commented several times about Diesel pricing, and I learned there are two grades of Diesel in the US. Diesel was consistently 30-50 cents or more pricier than gasoline.
We also had a spirited discussion about the difference between “motor” and “engine”, which is a concept I’d never considered. If it pleases the court, I maintain that if an “outboard motor” is really an engine, then that’s what it should be called. The words are used interchangeably, but by definition, it’s an engine, and I’d probably be laughed out of the rental place if I asked for an Outboard Engine for my (hypothetical) boat.
Calling out license plates on the trip was fun; the furthest being Florida and Maine. We did try to read or guess the state by the license plate.
Safe Travels and God’s blessings! You can continue to follow our adventures on Facebook at Normads (Norman Adventures), or here on the blog.