No matter how fast though, there are still 1500 someodd of them, between the reception hall, and home
No matter how comfortable, smooth, fast, and well appointed your car is, it's still not very fun having to spend 24 driving hours in it.
Doing it for the second time in just less than a month, while still recovering from pneumonia... Yeah not fun at all.
So the numbers... 1522 total miles (including a detour or two), at an average road hours speed of 65.6mph. We did it in 24 on the road hours with about five hours in gas and food stops, for 19 hours actual drive time; so our actual driving speed average was just about 80mph (which is about right, since I wasn't kidding about having the cruise locked at 84 almost the entire way).
That's actually a lot better than we'd planned. It's pretty hard to make a road hours average of much more than 50mph on most trips; and an actual driving speed average of 80 is DAMN good.
Our average mileage en route was 24.4mpg, for a total of about 63 gallons of gas burned; which was also a lot better than we'd planned. This is especially true, because we were doing 84 the whole way (including through the mountains, both up and down). During some stretches where we were limited to 74 (I kept it to plus 9) I was seeing sustained 28.7mpg.
We did two overnights, taking it a bit easier than the last trip; so our total time enroute, was 41 hours, for a total trip average of about 37mph.
However, even taking it easier, and much more comfortably; we still managed the trip in 7 fewer driving hours, and 13 fewer hours overall than with the truck and trailer. Don't even need to talk about how much better average speed, or how much less fuel etc...
Oh and no blowouts, and no mechanical damage.
Overall... It was a much better trip than the first time. The kids were great, the car was as comfortable as any car can be for so much time in it, and we enjoyed some audiobooks along the way.
The kids are freaking out about how awesome the new house is, and the dogs are freaking out at how awesome it is to have the girls back.
We're just exhausted, and are about ready to fall over for a day or so.
