My sister and Brother in-law made the trip West the previous week to swap pickups with BIL's father. They drove West in a 2012 PU with close to 300,000 miles on it and a bad case of road salt rust. They have previously lived in CO and NH before their lasted place in Ohio so the truck had seen plenty of road salt. The truck swap with BIL's dad, was into a 2016 PU with only 30,000 miles on it. My sister and niece took to the air for the ride home. Since BIL had seen numerous routes, and I have seen plenty of ID,WY, KS, NB, we picked the far Northern route even though it was close too 100 miles longer. Different scenery is always a good thing.
After I drove from the Portland area non stop to Missoula, we figured out the truck had a range of close too 600 miles.
Nice big Montana blue sky with puffy white clouds for first quick fuel stop.
BIL took over for the drive to Billings and we finished the day with 900 miles. We only made one stop to check out the Missouri River head waters just off the highway.
Think I could spend a week here with a fly rod, vest, and wading boots and probably not cover the same water twice.
Miles City was another 120 miles and showed sketchy hotels, so we put up in Billings. The next morning I started us out from Billings and covered another 550 miles non stop. Miles City actually looked like it has adequate hotels as we passed by.
BIL took us another 450 non stop to finish the day somewhere in Wisconsin having covering right around 1000 miles for the 2nd day.
This shot was somewhere in Eastern Montana. Keep in mind that Montana is over 600 miles across followed by around 500 miles across North Dakota. From Missoula to Wisconsin it pretty much looks like this. This stretch the cruise control was stuck at 85mph.
We found that North Dakota had the best piece of interstate highway---mostly nice smooth concrete allowing the cruise control to be bumped up to 87mph.
See if you can guess where we were when this pic came in from my sister that was tracking us on GPS.
After a nice dinner and short hotel sleep, I started us on the home stretch and knocked off the first 400 miles. This section was a bit slower taking us South through Chicago and lots of traffic and construction. We also saw the cheapest fuel on this section.
Pretty nice to see considering the tank we left home with cost $4.59 per gallon.
We averaged around 16mpg from Oregon to Madison Wisconsin.
From Wisconsin and traffic running more around 70-75mph the milage jumped up to around 18mpg.
We filled up and BIL took over for the home stretch of 250 miles. Somewhere between Indiana and Ohio we hit the first and only 10 minutes of rain. Only enough to really make a mess of the bugs on the windshield.
We hit their house just in time to unload the truck and hit 2 for 1 margarita happy hour at their favorite mexican restaurant. After dinner we took a few frozen drinks to go, and headed for the patio at home to watch lots of neighbors putting on their own fireworks shows. Got up about the crack of 10am and went grocery shopping. Fired off the grill at 1pm and had some steaks, corn on the cob, potatoes, garlic bread and all the fixings. Had to eat early to get me to the airport for return trip. Pretty neat flying on the night of the 4th with fireworks visible for some of the flight home. At home and in bed by midnight on the 4th.
3 loooong days of driving to cover around 2600 miles, followed by 4-5 hours of air time to get home.
After I drove from the Portland area non stop to Missoula, we figured out the truck had a range of close too 600 miles.
Nice big Montana blue sky with puffy white clouds for first quick fuel stop.
BIL took over for the drive to Billings and we finished the day with 900 miles. We only made one stop to check out the Missouri River head waters just off the highway.
Think I could spend a week here with a fly rod, vest, and wading boots and probably not cover the same water twice.
Miles City was another 120 miles and showed sketchy hotels, so we put up in Billings. The next morning I started us out from Billings and covered another 550 miles non stop. Miles City actually looked like it has adequate hotels as we passed by.
BIL took us another 450 non stop to finish the day somewhere in Wisconsin having covering right around 1000 miles for the 2nd day.
This shot was somewhere in Eastern Montana. Keep in mind that Montana is over 600 miles across followed by around 500 miles across North Dakota. From Missoula to Wisconsin it pretty much looks like this. This stretch the cruise control was stuck at 85mph.
We found that North Dakota had the best piece of interstate highway---mostly nice smooth concrete allowing the cruise control to be bumped up to 87mph.
See if you can guess where we were when this pic came in from my sister that was tracking us on GPS.
After a nice dinner and short hotel sleep, I started us on the home stretch and knocked off the first 400 miles. This section was a bit slower taking us South through Chicago and lots of traffic and construction. We also saw the cheapest fuel on this section.
Pretty nice to see considering the tank we left home with cost $4.59 per gallon.
We averaged around 16mpg from Oregon to Madison Wisconsin.
From Wisconsin and traffic running more around 70-75mph the milage jumped up to around 18mpg.
We filled up and BIL took over for the home stretch of 250 miles. Somewhere between Indiana and Ohio we hit the first and only 10 minutes of rain. Only enough to really make a mess of the bugs on the windshield.
We hit their house just in time to unload the truck and hit 2 for 1 margarita happy hour at their favorite mexican restaurant. After dinner we took a few frozen drinks to go, and headed for the patio at home to watch lots of neighbors putting on their own fireworks shows. Got up about the crack of 10am and went grocery shopping. Fired off the grill at 1pm and had some steaks, corn on the cob, potatoes, garlic bread and all the fixings. Had to eat early to get me to the airport for return trip. Pretty neat flying on the night of the 4th with fireworks visible for some of the flight home. At home and in bed by midnight on the 4th.
3 loooong days of driving to cover around 2600 miles, followed by 4-5 hours of air time to get home.
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. Hope you didn’t have the same experience. 
