Observations from the control room....

The Denali is a great car for long distance travel. Susan even agrees with me on this, even though prior to this trip, she had not driven it more than 4-5 times and then only for a few miles. She doesn't like to back it and I can't really blame her as the view rearward from the driver's seat is not ideal. It does have the back-up collision warning system that beeps if you get too close to something, but using that effectively takes a little getting used to.

However, she didn't have any trouble driving it for hours at a time on the trip. We switched off about every 2 hours which worked out really well. It gave each of us some time to relax (even snooze a little), but kept miles rolling. It's a tall vehicle, so you get a great view down the road and it doesn't get blocked by anything except the biggest of trucks on the highway. It has plenty of power to pass slower vehicles and it's very comfy. The electric seats are adjustable for any size person and the foot pedals are adjustable for any length of leg. Up to three personal settings for the seats, pedals and mirrors can be saved and restored at the touch of a button, so it is quick and easy to change drivers. I will say however, that no matter how comfortable a seat is, 7-8 hours a day sitting will wear you down. It was wonderful just to get out and walk around outside for a while when we arrived anywhere.

The OnStar feature was great. On the outbound side of the trip, we called OnStar every day around 2:00pm-3:00pm when we were sure how far we would be able to drive that day. We gave them our specs for a room (king-size, non-smoking, price range) and what town we wanted to stay in. They would then hang up, do the research and call us back about 30 minutes later with the reservation people for the hotel on-line with them. All we had to do then was read them our credit card number and get their exact street address. We then plugged that into the GPS and presto! We were taken right to the hotel. Easy as falling off a log. We didn't use them so much on the inbound leg of the trip because we were staying in Atlanta, New Orleans and San Antonio for two nights. We used the laptop to make reservations for those cities on-line. All in all though, I definitely thought the extra $7.95/month for the concierge service through OnStar was well worth it. They were always very friendly and willing to go the extra mile to make sure we got what we wanted.

There were zero problems with the Denali on this trip. I had the oil changed once when we were in North Carolina and had it washed once when we in San Antonio, Texas (see previous post about the day we left SA). Although it did get pretty dirty on the outbound part of the trip, it sat in the driveway at my Mom's house for the two weeks that we were there and a couple of pretty intense rain storms cleaned it up very nicely. We used my Mom's car (a Buick) while we were in NC because my Mom can't climb up into the Denali. The Buick is much lower to the ground and she can just turn around and plop down into the seat.

OK, now the downside of driving the Denali 9000 miles. The gas mileage! I present the following chart which speaks for itself:

Date	Price	Gallons	Miles	MPG
22-Jul	2.649	19.635	317.3	16.160
N/A
23-Jul	2.749	17.729	308.7	17.412
24-Jul	2.439	19.675	349	17.738
24-Jul	2.349	18.759	361.7	19.281
25-Jul	2.279	19.746	336.7	17.052
28-Jul	2.499	16.407	300	18.285
30-Jul	2.579	15.9	270.8	17.031
3-Aug	2.699	20.563	356.6	17.342
4-Aug	2.459	18.565	313.9	16.908
5-Aug	2.609	16.482	304.4	18.469
7-Aug	2.619	18.714	293.2	15.667
9-Aug	2.499	15.806	240.3	15.203
10-Aug	2.469	18.631	305.6	16.403
15-Aug	2.569	21.41	318.6	14.881
20-Aug	2.499	21.412	281.1	13.128
24-Aug	2.399	17.09	277.3	16.226
26-Aug	2.499	20.807	321.4	15.447
26-Aug	2.399	18.653	319	17.102
28-Aug	2.369	13.511	216.2	16.002
28-Aug	2.359	16.956	313.7	18.501
30-Aug	2.679	20.53	305.5	14.881
30-Aug	2.599	19.238	317	16.478
31-Aug	2.459	16.268	281.5	17.304
1-Sep	2.589	12.359	225.7	18.262
1-Sep	2.959	14.024	239.1	17.049
Avg price	2.531
Avg MPG	16.651

The one line above with the N/A on it refers to the one time that I failed to write down the mileage after filling the tank in Utah the second day we were out on the road.

The best mileage we got (19.281) was on the 300 miles downhill from Denver to somewhere in Nebraska. You can also see that the mileage gets much worse as we stay in place for more than one night. Two nights in Chicago, five in Marquette, two in Baltimore, 14 in North Carolina, 2 in Atlanta, 2 in New Orleans and 2 in San Antonio. We did a fair amount of local driving in each place and that brought the mileage down dramatically. There was also the nightmare day on I95 as we headed south to NC where we crept along at less than 25 miles an hour for several hours.

Note that as we leave the west coast gas gets cheaper. It is very cheap in the middle of the country and then gets more expensive again on the east coast. Note the jump on the last day as we drove back into California from Arizona. A dramatic difference! The last fill-up was in El Centro, California out in the desert east of San Diego.