The get-away

We decided to take a few days away from the cities in celebration of our 39th wedding anniversary. Since it was Stake Conference and the fact it did not start until 2:00PM, we decided to leave Sunday morning. A second purpose was to check out the true gas mileage of the RAV4. We stopped at the Pine City branch for 10:00AM church and then continued on to Duluth. A co-worker of Judy's offered her house to us and we took her up on it. The house was on the point on the other side of the lift bridge. We took a thousand pictures and will post them later. Wait! It was foggy (visibility was 100 yards at times), drizzly or rainy the whole time so not one picture was taken.

The next morning, we took off for Bayfield, WI. It is a small tourist town of 600 regular residents. There are some big houses overlooking the lake and lots of tall masted sailboats. Since it was after tourist season, not much was open. But if we waited around for the next season, we could have taken a large sailboat ride. We did stop at a Scandinavian shop that had lot of very expensive nice looking stuff. I was looking at a Norwegian sweater and all the sweaters were made in CHINA. Even Norway is outsourcing to China. Did not get one. I will wait for a trip overseas. I looked at Dansko clogs - too expensive for plastic souls with stapled on patten leather, leather or vinyl tops (I can do a lot with $125). We managed to find "Maggies Lunch and Dinner" open for a quick lunch. That was the community gathering place because it seemed like half the town was there. It was decorated with pink flamingos. We walked out on the pier and then headed back to Duluth.

Mileage results on the RAV: 23.5 MPH the first half of the way up to Duluth. Then I saw that the console gear shift was knocked out of overdrive (easy to do). After putting it back into overdrive, mileage went up to 25.4 MPH. That was at 75 MPH. Then on the trip to Bayfield, at only 60MPH and on a new, very smooth road we got an average of 28.6MPG. That was great on a car advertised to get 26MPG with a V6 with 4WD. That included slowing down for towns. On the way home the first 1/2 at 75MPH we only got 23.4MPG so I dropped it down to the speed limit of 70 MPH and the mileage jumped to 26.5 MPG. But that was after all the bad roads north of the 35W/35E split and the hills south of Duluth. So I guess the best mileage was at 60 but still above the rated mileage at 70 on smooth roads. Still not as good as the car I gave up - the Talon. Brett says he is getting between 33 and 34 MPG. Okay, now for the truth. The above numbers were from the fuel computer in the car. The actual miles driven divided by the gallons used tell a different story: to Duluth only 23.5; to Bayfield and back 26.6 and back home 23.5. So what good is the on-board fuel computer? It is good for trends only.