to Caspar 18 October 2017

Home Again

After a delicious Eggs Bennie at 12 Acres, we headed south down the coast on Highway 101. Foggy in spots, but green and gorgeous; the least traveled bit of Oregon Coast, and blessedly devoid of summertime RV-hogs. An hour and a half from Port Orford to California, where the nice troll in the Ag Inspection Station said, "Good morning, have a nice day," and waved us through.

From Crescent City onward, the highway was littered with Road Construction / One Lane / Prepare to Stop instances, a total of ten by the time we got to Leggett and the Highway One turn-off.

Lunch at Renata's Crêperie on G Street in Arcata – what a lovely town! Put a high-end state college in a remote town, not too far but far enough from a county seat and commercial center to draw off the mercenaries, and Voilà! You got yourself a lovely town.

The crêpe was delicious, too, but not especially photogenic.

On through Eureka and the gorgeous, windey freeway south through Garberville, then the super-twisty Highway One out to the coast and along our blessed ocean. Not much smoke, but some fog, just like the Oregon Coast.

Rolled into Caspar just after 4pm, with a handful of urgencies to deal with. The cat took her time checking in, but she's with us now. 

This was our first long outing with our "new" Prius Prime (purchased last December). Up until now, we've limited ourselves to trips to Santa Rosa and Chico, but this trip, 1,265.6 miles, consisted of several ~200 mile days – well over the car's 30 mile EV range. But the EV capability coupled with regenerative braking clearly makes a huge difference, even on the hilly byways we traveled on this trip. 

Overall gas mileage: 63.5mpg. 40% of the drive was in EV mode, meaning that the theoretical 150 miles of EV capacity got expanded to 506 actual driving miles. That's impressive.

Even better: the last run, starting in Florence (where we got our third tank of gas; we started out with less than half a tank and arrived home with three-eighths). Home 422 miles later, getting 70.6mpg, with fully 49% of the ride in EV mode.