Bill, what the hell are you driving? If I was to say that you could average 50mph on your journey and it took 6 hours each way, you would have covered 600 miles. Taking the low figure of 40 gallons, that gives 15 miles per gallon of petrol. I know that your gallon is smaller than ours but it still sounds like a lot of fuel.

I don't know if deisels are popular in the US or not but my mother drives a smallish deisel engined car and driven sensibly, it will do 50+ miles on a gallon of fuel. Even driven at 70mph it still returns over 40...

I guess it is just as well fuel is so much cheaper in the US.

Tim, one of my brothers have done some travelling in oz an told me about the roads and how remote places were they were (he started in Melbourne, worked down, headed north - up the middle - and back down the East coast to Melbourne again).

He had also a few months holiday in the US until the RV (I hope I have the right term - very big motor home) he had bought caught fire. That did something like 12-15 to the gallon but I thought cars would do better.

Jon