Leaderboard

Back from our trip to Colorado! I drove the entire route solo both ways approx. 13 hours straight. Was not even the slightest bit fatigued after all of that driving! Did a lot of high elevation driving including 1 drive up to the summit of Pikes Peak with a fully loaded van (2 bikes, gear, 2 dogs, full 8 gallon water tank). Overall the van did great but was easier to manage in the hills in "S" mode where I could select the gears. I can now see the value of that swing away hitch that was posted in here for the bike rack. We arrived a day early as I mentioned above and found a place to pull off on a dirt road in the Pike National Forest. I set up my bed arrangement and it worked great. I also cracked a window and had a bug screen with magnets on the exterior of the sliding door window. Problems arose as temperatures plummeted into the 40's. It got too cold to sleep and I didn't have a sleeping bag or anything, just a thin sheet so I turned the van on to warm up the interior. My fuel guage said that we had approximately "300 miles to E". It seems when the van idles with the heat on, I counted 8 minutes 46 seconds for the fuel indicator to drop a mile. I figured this would give me PLENTY of time to finish a good nap before running out of fuel. (ie: 8min x 200miles / 60 = 26.6hours). Sure enough, I slept great! Woke up, drove down to the Hungry Bear in Woodland Park, CO and had a nice pancake and egg sandwich breakfast with coffee. Shower was also really nice to have and I used it several times to rinse myself off and my bikes. It's even better if you need to rinse the dirt out of a wound from MTB riding. Finally, the fuel mileage was great! Speed limits were 75+ in many areas and we were doing that and up to 80-84mph on cruise control and I was averaging over 24 mpg!