Prior to this, my tank was at 91.8 MPG at just shy of 300 miles. So why is 66.5 MPG with 292.9 miles a success story?
Because this was going from my home standard of about 2190 ft to over 5000 ft altitude, much of this climb through gravel forest service roads to get to the Oregon's Eagle Cap hiking trails! Please read on for more details (cliff notes at the end for those in a hurry).
On the way there, we stopped in Baker City and was sitting at 69.7 MPG, having climbed about 4800 ft elevation and dropped to around 3400 for Baker itself. On the way to Medical Springs (where the gravel road started), the IMA battery was bottomed out from all the climbing, so on some harsh down hill areas, I tried to recharge heavily with full regen braking, but it stopped and gave me a P1449 code (first IMA drop out since I first did a full grid recharge when I first got the car in I think April). Once we hit the gravel, I was only able to do about 25 MPH safely, at most. Anything else was fish tailing and pretty scary (with a few exceptions of flat, straight areas, where ~30 was possible). Some areas were such a climb that I had to do it in 1st gear for quite a while, as 2nd dropped speed very quickly. My intake temps on the way in hit over 170*F! So I had to make a stop to revert it to a near-stock intake and my temps quickly dropped to 150 and slowly down to ~120. It was another 53 Miles from Baker to the trail head, about 20 miles of that was the gravel path. At this point, I dropped to 56.6 MPG, putting me at 63.4 average.
A quick summery of the hike (my first backpacking trip) was just amazing. I've never experienced anything like it! Did about 24 miles and 4450 ft of elevation in 3 days. I was pretty beat at the end and didn't pack nearly enough food (bad math on my part).
On the way back, I was exhausted. Starving! I wanted to get back quick and my hyper miler self had to take a back seat. Sadly, the forest service road signage was pretty terrible and got me a little lost for a while. Also, stopping in deep gravel = getting stuck, so if you take your insight on these harsh roads, note that. So an extra ~20 miles up and down the gravel roads did my MPG no justice. Got to Baker, reset the IMA fuse to get it going for the way home, ate a GIANT burger at Barley Browns (one of my favorite spots!) and... it hit me hard. I was extremely tired. On the way home, I started feeling very drowsy. I knew that I needed to get home ASAP, so for the first time since I started really hypermiling (3-4 years now?), I did the full speed limit on the highway (70 MPG). On top of that, plenty of regen. I still tried to keep lean burn when I could, since there was plenty of down hill. Uphill, I probably only did around 50 MPH. Total return trip was 133.6 miles with 69.5 MPG.
Total trip, again, was 66.5 MPG and 292.9 miles.
Now, will I do it again? There's a good chance I won't. The service roads were washboards with plenty of large rocks and potholes. It was like a human going on a deep fat fried binge for a week... there's no way it was good for my little Insight! Just all that vibration and jarring... but nothing seemed to be damaged immediately. So in my future, I'll be looking for something that can still net some decent MPG, but give me some of those "off road" capabilities for doing future trips.
TL;DR - The trip was from my house, up and down a lot of elevation without IMA support most of the time, through around 60 miles total of rough gravel roads, climbing as low as 1st gear, and returning on the highway at a full 70MPH with IMA recharging.
Thanks for reading! Here's a quick pic of one of many breathtaking sights from the trip (no picture could ever do the view justice, let alone the entire experience!)
