I drove from my house in Buffalo, NY to Hybridfest in Madison, WI, stopping at my sister's house in north-central Indiana on the way. I documented my mpg carefully on the best leg, the 457mi drive home from her house to mine.
Instead of taking the interstate from my sister's house to the Ohio Turnpike, I took the back roads. It was an interesting change of pace, and it cut that leg from 101mi to 85mi without taking any additional time. I got
88.8mpg for 85.9mi on that leg.
To me, that's FAR more impressive than the 98.2 mpg (plus some Wh/mi) I got in the FE competition in Madison under nearly unusable driving conditions, or even the 140-something mpg the winner got with his super-low-speed P&G with little regard for tailgaters and stop signs.
Here's a picture of me having my cake and eating it too. That's 144mi of the Ohio Turnpike at 65-74mph (mostly 70mph) without dropping out of lean burn. Windows up on a fairly warm day.
The 72mpg, high-mph solution I ran in the hills of PA/NY dropped me below 80mpg for the day.
Other data from the long weekend:
Buffalo to northern IL with an overnight stop in Indiana: 9.725gal, 708.0mi, 72.8mpg
From there to Hybridfest and back to my sister's house in Indiana: 7.106gal, 493.9mi, 69.5mpg
Totals for the long weekend: ~30 hrs door to door, 1658.9mi, 22.65gal, 73.2mpg.