Yesterday afternoon I drove the Blue Miata over to Tonkin Mazda to get its 15k mile service. Because I got an oil change just before I left my Service Advisor was a little surprised that I was back with such a high mileage figure. 🙂
Today it was the Black Miata’s turn. This service is going to take a bit longer than yesterday’s 2 hour time frame. It’s getting a new clutch disc – Bucky Earns His Name
I’m going to blame it on COVID. I did a lot of sleeping. Yesterday I started to feel a little better and managed a one-mile walk. Today I made it over to the DMV to get a title, a lien-free title, for the ’24 Miata. Now I need to start working on getting Bucky all registered and titled. And get the clutch issue fixed so it can not only be legally driven but also be fun to drive.
Yesterday I edited the Jumbo Road Trip Wrap-up. It seems when I mentioned all the states I passed through, I totally forgot about the one Canadian province I went through. The other correction was on how much the sixty-one-day trip cost. I at first figured it was over twenty thousand dollars. Boy, was I wrong. Somehow when I added up all the cash-out figures, I came up with $10,400. I just added an extra decimal point; it was actually $1,040. And I combed through both months credit card bills, eliminating the normal living stuff that hits the card, and the grand total turned out to be a touch over $7,900. That’s not nothing, but I think it was well worth it.
I don’t know what’s worse, coming to a complete stop after 2 months on the road or testing positive for COVID the day after.
Somewhere along the line the Miata picked up a star crack in the windshield; it is not in my line of sight, but I want someone to fill it in. I have to go to the DMV to get the official title without a lein for the car too. I also have to start work on Bucky the Miata, it too needs a title, a registration, the clutch disc changed, and maybe figure out why the shifter is not vertical.
I need some work too. I’ve still got the infected, failed root canal that needs fixing. Then there’s that COVID thing; last time it took like 6 weeks before I was virus-free. And that’s just barely enough time to get to Switzerland to visit Sally.
One thing at a time, I’ve got a DMV appointment on Monday where I’ll get the 2024 Miata title taken care of. I’m going to bring the the 2001’s title stuff with me too and see if I can get 2 for the price of 1.
I left Fairview on April 18th and returned 61 days later on June 17th. It was really only 60-1/2 because yesterday was the second shortest drive of the whole trip, I was home by mid-morning. Wethersfield, CT, to Springfield, MA was the shortest at 30 miles.
There were 35 driving days, ranging from 3 hours all the way up to 9 between leaving one place in the morning and arriving at that night’s stay. The average was probably around 7 or 8 hours with stops. I traveled through 31 states, including five new to me; Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho. This leaves just one state out the 50 I have not spent any time in – Alaska. I also crossed one Canadian province, Ontario
Now let’s talk about how far I drove. Day before yesterday I mentioned 526 miles until I discovered that the odometer only went up to 9,999.9 miles in Coeur d’Alene, ID. I added that to the 9,500 I had at the coffee stop in Billings and got a total of 10,026 miles driven. Because I always enter my gas info into the Fuelly app when I fill up, I downloaded all the fill ups from the trip and added up the total mileage and the figure was 10,025.1! Perfect, right? Not so fast there sailor. I went out to the car this morning and got the mileage from yesterday’s morning’s fill up in eastern Oregon. It was 163.3 giving a trip total of 10,188.4 miles. Things got interesting when I checked the B Trip number, it read 445.6. Add that figure to the 9,999.9 and you get a grand total of 10,445.5. And that number is the minimum, because, remember, I didn’t know how long B Trip had been maxed out. I’m rounding it out to 10,500 miles.
That last twist also means I didn’t capture a gas fill up that covered 450-ish miles. All told, I used a total of 277.876 gallons (that I accounted for) at an average price of $3.829 a gallon. The lowest price paid was in North Dakota of $2.839 and the highest paid was $4.999 in Maine.
I spent 21 days at the houses of friends and relatives. There was 18 days in hotels, 16 days in Airbnbs and 5 in VRBOs. The most expensive night was an Airbnb in Rochester, MN at $258.49, but it was nearly the nicest place I stayed in, plus it was walking distance to downtown and the Mayo Clinic Hospitals. The cheapest night was at the Holiday Inn Express in Lubbock, TX, but only because it was free, I used my IHG points. The real cheapest was the Airbnb Sally and I split the cost of in Hammond. The lowest I paid for a room for me was $96.11 at the Quality Inn in Robbinsville, NC. I’m always saying that staying in an Airbnb is almost cheaper than staying at a chain hotel, well, its close, but not true. The average for the hotels came in at $142.37 and the Airbnb and VRBO came in at $163.63, but I think it is worth the extra dub (or double sawbuck.)
How much money did I spend on the trip total? I know the gas costs (sort of) I know the total of how much it cost to spend the night out and I can tell how much cash out I took at ATMs, but I don’t feel like combing through every purchase using the charge card to find out where it went on all the incidentals, so a ballpark figure would be $10k. I decided to do just that. Went back to the May & June credit card bills and crossed out all the stuff is all the streaming services, my internet and a couple Amazon purchases that weren’t trip related. Grand Total: $7,920.67
Was it worth it? Hell yes, and then some. Will I do it again, probably. I know the Miata’s trim level is called GT for Grand Touring, but the next time it will be in a true GT car. This 70-year-old body still has no trouble getting in an out of a Miata, but is more the car’s lightweight and single suspension setting that beats up my aging internals.
Umatilla, Oregon Post Office
Today is Day 61, and like I did on Day 1, I took the opportunity to take a few Post Office photos. I grabbed the first three upon entering the home state. And because I really got to Fairview pretty early I should have stopped at the other two, Rufus & Arlington, that are right off I-84.
I was planning on keeping track of how far I will have gone for the whole trip, but now I’m not so sure. I have two different trip counters, A & B, and I keep resetting A at each fill-up so I can keep track of gas mileage and leaving B alone. Today when I stopped for gas in Coeur d’Alene when I went by A after resetting it, I noticed that B was reading 9999.9. Cool, I’ll reach the 10k mark once I start rolling again, so I left B showing and pulled out of the gas station. After driving for a minute, it never changed. Then I did the Homer Simpson head slap, DOH! That’s as far as that trip counter can go, so I reset trip counter B.
How far had I been driving with it sitting on all nines? I remembered telling the barista at the drive-thru coffee place in Billings yesterday morning that I had just passed the ninety-five hundred mile mark on my way there. So, using Google Maps, I backtracked the mileage between Billings and Coeur d’Alene and came up with 526 miles. This means that I am going to be off around 0.2% or really just an inconsequential amount.
Both of today’s Roadside America photos are from Idaho, first up is the Sunshine Mine Happy Family Statue in Wallace and then there was Tidal Wave of Canoes in Lewiston.
I also visited three more spots that were listed on the Roadside America website. The first one was the World Famous 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar in Haugan, MT, where I bought a couple of postcards and a sticker that said “Montana” on it for the trunk lid.
The second one I did photograph, but I couldn’t really get a decent photo worth anything of the Uniroyal Gal with Tattoo in Pomeroy, WA.
The third one was interesting in that it harkened back to Blue Earth, MN, where there was a 55-foot-tall Green Giant statue. In Dayton, WA, there is a Hillside Jolly Green Giant that is 300′ tall but looks tiny because the hill it is on is so far from the road.
Blue Car
From the Roadside America’s website: “Montana sculptor Jim Dolan spent 15 months and his own money to make, move, and install the 39 horses in 2013 as a permanent artwork. They’re designed so that their heads, manes, and tails move in the breeze.”
The path down to the ravine is kind of steep but very doable; the path up from the ravine to the hill where the horses are is very steep. So steep that when I finished walking around and headed back to the car, I had to zigzag down like a sailboat tacking into the wind.