Month: June 2023

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Orange You Glad Its Not More Volkswagens Edition of SORT
As of Monday, June 26, 2023 at 5:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2008 Porsche Boxster 2005 Jeep Wrangler 2014 BMW Z4
Actually I could have almost pulled off a three Volkswagen product spread in all ORANGE this week. There is a Karman Ghia, a Bug and a Bus all in that glorious color available for bid right now.

Here is what last week’s ago cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sports: 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Sold for $35,500 on 6/26/23
Off-Road: 1974 Volkswagen Baja Beetle Bid to $7,444 on 6/21/23
Touring: 1975 Volkswagen 23 Window Bus Sold for $35,000 on 6/19/23

Happy Summer Solstice

Although I’d be hard pressed to say summer was here. The last two nights there has been a freeze warning in Klamath Falls and this morning when I went out to run a quick errand I put the top up because it was still in the upper 30s…

Keeping in the spirit of the solstice, today’s Bing Wallpaper is of Stonehenge, on this last road trip we found a Stonehenge replica in Odessa, TX and 14 years ago we made a pilgrimage to Alliance, NE to visit Carhenge.

What You Have Been Waiting For

Another one of my internet famous road trip wrap ups.

We were gone from home for a little over 2-1/4 million seconds or 26 days. This equates to 25 overnight stays of which 19 were in IHG properties. Eighteen of them were in our go to Holiday Inn Express and one that was called the Pagosa Lodge. Three nights were spent in a VRBO in Laurel, Mississippi (AKA Napierville) and the other four were at Casa de Sally in Santa Fe, NM.

The first leg of the journey was from home to Laurel and that was 10 straight days of driving with a new hotel every night. We have both decided that that is too much packing and unpacking in a row and have vowed to never do that again. The next leg was Laurel to Santa Fe and that was 6 days of a hotel every night. Which might be a day or two longer than we will be doing going forward without a two night stay in the same place. The last leg was 5 days from Santa Fe to home.

The original plan was to spend four nights over Memorial Day Weekend in Laurel, but after three days we had seen all we wanted to see so we opted to bail a day early and head down to Hammond, LA. While we were this far east we wanted get in a quick visit with Donna’s second Mom and mother to Donna’s childhood friend, the owner of Casa de Sally in Santa Fe, the nearly centenarian Adele.

Also part of the original plan was five nights with Sally in Santa Fe to help her but her first new car in 20 years. But with the combination of getting the car shopping out of the way in three days and our dread of the 450 miles of travel on I-40 plus navigating the very busy Las Vegas we opted to leave a day early and take a longer, less annoying way home.

When I plotted the route of the trip before leaving I measured the distance from town to town using Google Maps and came up with 5,480 miles in 19 days of traveling. With the 2 extra driving days and any wandering around at our stays we ended up with 6,450 for the whole trip.

The original distance estimates had the leg from Ely, NV to Green River, UT at 329 miles as the longest, but when we rearranged the return trip the stretch between Pagosa Springs, CO and Green River was supposed to be 421 miles. Usually we fill up the car either before turning in for the night or each morning before departure, but occasionally it happens mid-drive, so I can’t really tell you which day was the highest mileage drive.

The longest drive between fill ups was 364.6 miles and the shortest was 206.8 miles. The most expensive price for our required premium gas was $4.799 in Ely, NV and the least expensive was in Laurel, MS at $3.309. We spent $712.89 for the 177.303 gallons we bought for the trip making the average price paid $4.024 a gallon. Our average MPG for the trip was 36.61 and even though these are meaningless, the worst for a fill up was 30.85 and the best was 43.63 MPG.

This is getting long, tomorrow we’ll talk hotels…

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

All Volkswagen Edition of SORT
As of Monday, June 19, 2023 at 3:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1967 Volkswagen
Karmann Ghia		 1974 Volkswagen
Baja Beetle		 1975 Volkswagen
23 Window Bus
More of a sporty body on a Beetle. More off-roady then last weeks pick. More windows that it originally had.

Here is what last week’s ago cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sports: 1964 Chevrolet Corvette Bid to $53,500 on 6/14/23
Off-Road: 1964 Mercury Monterey Bid to $18,750 on 6/15/23
Touring: 1963 Chevrolet Impala Bid to $298,000 on 6/17/23

And while a ‘Reserve Not Met’ does occasionally happen on some of my weekly picks, this is the first time that all three cars were not sold for that reason.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

60s Racer Edition of SORT
As of Monday, June 12, 2023 at 10:00 PM mountain time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1964 Chevrolet Corvette 1964 Mercury Monterey 1963 Chevrolet Impala
This was campaigned in the 60s and 70s by Sports Car Club of America national champion Bill Morrison. While this isn’t an off-road machine, it is a tribute to a car that did the Pikes Peak Hill Climb when it was just a dirt road. This car was factory built as a drag racer in the stock class and no matter how I try and twist this into a touring car I can’t.

Here is what last week’s ago cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sports: 2010 Mini Cooper S Laurel Sport Bid to $13,250 on 6/7/23
Off-Road: 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear L400 Sold for $9,900 on 6/6/23
Touring: 1951 Ford Country Squire Woody Wagon Sold for $47,000 on 6/9/23

37,000 Missed Hailstones

When we were about 15 miles from the Holiday Inn Express in Carson City we could see ahead of us very dark clouds and quite a few streaks of lightning. At hotel arrival I noticed a lot of white along the curbing and in all the cracks in the parking lot. Upon closer inspection I noticed that they were pea-sized white balls of ice. When I asked at the desk, “How long since it hailed?” The desk clerk said it was about 15 minutes back. Glad we missed it.

We didn’t miss a repeat of the scattered showers from yesterday though, for almost all of the second half of our drive along US-50, AKA The Loneliest Road in America, we were being rained on periodically. We had another disappointing lunch in Austin, NV because the Champs Burger truck was once again closed.

Afterwards, we were zipping east and Donna noticed on the map a notation of the geographic center of the state of Nevada not to far off US-50. The gray line meant it was dirt road, but it didn’t look too far, so what the heck. She pulled up a web page about it and it said that there was a road labeled “To Belmont” at about 26 miles from Austin. We saw no such road going south so I pulled over and looked at the map too. Where the map showed the gray line right near it was a picnic table icon. I said, “Oooh, I remember a roadside pull off with tables several miles back.” We turned around and went several miles back to that spot and sure enough there was a dirt road heading south called Monitor Valley Road. Nothing about Belmont but we headed down it. After a mile or so it was getting a bit too bumpy for our tastes, so we turned back to US-50 to continue on the Carson City. We did vow to rent an SUV for our next trip so we could go the whole 12 miles to the coordinates listed on that web page.

A few miles shy of Middlegate, Nevada the Mini crossed off another milestone on this trip, thirty seven thousand miles.

Intermittent Rain Showers


hover over the picture for a different view of this wind turbine farm

The whole of today’s drive was like the second half of yesterday’s drive, we were traveling it for first time in the opposite direction. And just like yesterday’s second half everything was new to us and beautiful to behold even while passing through intermittent rain showers for most of the day.

The drive along I-70 in Utah is one of, no make that the best Interstate we have ever driven. Even after the red rocks transition into brown the scenery is still fantastic. The ups and downs created a twisty highway for most of it that can be fun at the posted 60MPH or even better 70MPH. 🙂

And US-50 in Nevada to as far as Ely is no slouch either. We are now convinced that this is the route to take between Santa Fe and Klamath Falls even if it does cost us an extra day, hotel room, tank of gas and a couple meals out.

See my Instagram post from today for a couple other scenes from the drive.