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Looks like my family of five will be jumping into the HCH and heading to Savannah for the weekend. It's about 300 miles from our home.
We'd take the Grand Caravan if not for fuel cost. I don't think it's V6 has been started in two months.

Looks like my next tank will be a sacraficial one. The last time we all piled in the HCH for road trip I ended up with about 52MPG. Car loaded up to safety weight limit and lots of AC. :(

Any MPG suggestions from those here who road trip with family?
-Steve

Hi Steve:

___That is about a 7 hour drive while hypermiling … Start at about 09:00 PM and arrive by 04:00 AM. Kids are asleep, heat load is at a minimum, and you can do what you do best even with the family along!

___Best run I ever had in the MDX was overnight across AZ., NM, and parts of OK. Kids and wife asleep and I was doing what I like to do … End result. 600 + mile tank and something like 30 mpg’s. Wife had to drive the last 100 + miles as I was too tired. The MDX’s FE took a beating for the last 100 miles after we swapped as you can imagine :(

___Good Luck

___Wayne

As an edit, I just looked up that trip tank detail. Gallup, NM to Hinton, OK - 638.8 miles on 21.384 gallons for a 30.7 mpg tank :D

Have them push!

Pack as light as possible. Slyly lower your speed so the wife doesn't notice. leave in the early morning or in the evening so it is cooler outside so you can use less A/C.

State your parameters in advance: how fast you will go, what temp the a/c will be set at, and how many rest stops allowed. Scope out your eateries beforehand as well at chowhound.com so you don't get talked into McDonalds when Savannah's greatest bbq is around the corner. (Good food runs a close second to high mileage.) Find places you can park in the shade. Review your map route with your navigator before starting out so you don't make any wrong turns. Buy your gas after you get out of town, it's likely cheaper.

Hi all, got back from the trip Sunday with report.

We left From Atlanta to Savannah at about 3:00PM Friday afternoon and I had to choose a route- The faster, but longer 100% freeway through the city or shorter, single lane highway riddled with stops. Since it was about 3PM I thought I'd beat Atlanta traffic.
It was SO hot that AC was set to full and recirculate, but manually cycled off for steeper hills or acceleration to reduce enging load.
It was the five of us in the car with a trunk full of weekend luggage.

I was WRONG! about the traffic!

After about 25 miles from home we entered gridlock Atlanta. (of course the radio mentioned nothing of this)
The next 65 miles were the "move 50 to 1000 feet then stop for a couple minutes" type traffic and we lost more than an hour and a half in the mess. Somewhere in the soup I became so disgusted that I abandoned all hypermiler techniques and just wanted to get out of it.
Once we were free of the mess we stopped for dinner and after leaving I went back to manually cycling the AC on/off under heavy load, as well as DWL. Speed varied between about 60-68 in a 70 zone.

300 Miles from home we finally reached Savannah and I had 54 point something MPG and more than 1/2 tank left. I felt good about that.

We drove about 100 miles while in Savannah...to the beach, sight seeing Etc.

The road back to Atlanta from Savannah was clear, but the first 190 miles was straight into the steady Western blowing head wind. We set AC to high and I cycled it sometimes, but not as faithfully as before. Shortly after turning North the fuel icon came on and down to one bar, where I filled it up. I used cruise control almost exclusively from Savannah back to Atlanta, locked in at 61MPH in the 65-70 zones. (Just plain lazy)

The tank came out just over 55MPG and I'm pretty happy with that considering everything. :)

Since we've came back my wife has used my HCH exclusively for several short trips...I noticed I'm a couple hundred miles into this tank and only in the 40's MPG for this tank so I have alot of catching up to do if I hope to salvage my numbers.

We had a great time in Savannah, including taking photos of some ghostly images.
Pretty cool stuff, I'll post some of them here if you wish.
-Steve

I'd like to see the pics!

Thanks Tom!
I've put some photos here:
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9717#post9717
-Steve