Trial Run

New Bern, NC

This week the winter weather here will be great.   Sunny most of the time and warm, with daily high temperatures approaching 70F.   That gave Libby and I a bit of spring fever so yesterday we went out for a day-long drive.

Where did we go?   Libby's friends won't have a hard time guessing.   We went after pine needles. So far we've gathered needles from Maine south to Key West and west to Arizona and east to The Bahamas.  The best place of all those is Carolina Beach State Park.  That's the place with needles 13 inches or longer.   It happens to be only two hours from here by car.  So that's where we went.

We also gathered a little driving data on our car thinking ahead to next summer.  We traveled a bit more than 200 miles round trip, all over very flat terrain and never driving faster than 50 mph.   Our mileage for the trip was 25.6 mpg.  That's not very good compared to many modern cars that get 38 or more mpg.

If we drive 6,000 miles next summer at 25.6 mpg, we'll burn 235 galllons of gas, costing about $900.  If we had a newer car getting 38 mpg, we would burn 158 gallons costing about $630.  The difference is less than $300.   I guess that's less of a big deal that I thought.  A more modern car would cost us much more than $300.   My economic thinking on the whole subject is dominated by the plan to keep the car only a few months.