You may be wondering why I am doing this trip now, when prices for gasoline are at record highs. Why? Well, it’s not going to go down! Americans have traveled far less this year as fuel prices have gone up. The great American roadtrip is fading away.
This site is an effort of many people to experience the roadtrip. All of our money together will make filling up the tank easy. I’ll take pictures of everywhere. I’ll write about the capitals. It will all be here as it happens.
My car can get 35 mpg reliably. I got 39.1 mpg on my last leg from Dayton, OH to Philadelphia in early June. The highest I have attained ever was 46 mpg. The trip is so far 14,719 miles. At 35mpg, that is 420.5 gallons of gas.
Here is the Department of Energy website on fuel prices: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
That says that as of this post fuel is an average of 4.08 per gallon across the nation. 420.5 times 4.08 is $1,715.81 estimated exact fuel costs. Now this does not include driving in cities, getting lost finding the capital buildings, and it does not include several side trips I’m going to take to see landmarks.
But it shows that taking a trip like this is not as expensive as you’d think – even with the crazy fuel prices.