It’s Sunday morning and we’ve been home for 50 some hours. Yesterday wasn’t good for much more than resting, although we did get into the pool for a lovely dip while the temp hovered somewhere around 97º.
We pretty much reversed our route from last April, cutting diagonally through Arkansas as the shortest route, and perhaps the second flattest route.
It’s an OK route. I’m not sure that we have quite gotten it down to favorite places to stop or fuel or eat, but it’s a work in progress.
We did discover a lovely Mediterranean place in Nacogdoches — I mentioned that a couple days ago. It turns out that Nacogdoches has a few lovely places to eat as distinguished from some of the towns we have stopped at along the Los Fresnos-Milwaukee pipeline! But, most of the trip remains indistinct and unworthy of detailed comment. For the time being it’s just a way to get to our destination; it has not yet become a preferred route.
This time we had no torrential rains to cope with, and no re-routing of our rerouted route. If there was a highlight or a most memorable memory it relates to getting accustomed to the new car.
We have been seeing tankful fuel mileage numbers in the low thirties and compared to our lifetime average in the CR-V of 25.3 that’s a good improvement after 14 years.
The real highlight is that with an 18 gallon tank we now have a much improved range of nearly 500 miles (Which is to say, the car wants to think that with 33 mpg we can get 600 miles — but we don’t always get that much mileage). Still at fill-up we had averaged 34.4 mpg over 471 miles (one tank) and the car thought we had another 180 miles to go. It appears that in Texas with higher speed limits and the oppressive heat (you know how it goes — more heat, air less dense, less oxygen) we are getting a little lower fuel mileage. I’ll monitor that over time. Still, I’m happy with the car so far.
The CR-V could reliably be pushed to 300-ish miles per tank. The gauge wasn’t particularly reliable. There were times I would get 100 miles after the red fuel warning light came on — and there were times that I got nowhere near that (based on how many gallons we put into the tank) I’ll be curious to see how reliable this proves to be.
I checked with our new neighbor (the sale and handover took place in our absence) and she’s been watering our little babies every 3rd day. The raised bed looks pretty good. We lost 3 plants — they were looking peaked before we left and I was pretty sure they would succumb. The rest look like they are doing fine. Now all they need is some time to fill out and fill the space.
It’s good to be home. I think “home” is where our bed is. Or at least that’s what my body seems to think. As soon as we walk in the door I can feel everything relaxing.
From the Far Side of '70 
You must be logged in to post a comment.