We’re almost halfway through our cross country drive in the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. So far, the car is impressive. It’s roomy, somewhat comfy, and gets great gas mileage. We’ve managed to get 35.4 mpg over the 1600 miles we’ve traveled so far. The vast majority of that was highway or two-lane road cruising at 75 MPH. When we toured around the South Dakota Black Hills, that number shot up to 43 mpg thanks to the slow speeds and frequent down hill driving. Then there is the innovative speedometer cluster which is by far, the most forward thinking part of the car. Two LCD screens flank both sides of the speedo and gives numerous readouts of the cars functions. The screens are customizable and are a welcome alternative to static analog gauges.
The best part of the trip so far has been seeing America. We cruised south of Chicago and hit the rolling hills of Iowa. Then we made our way up to Sioux Falls, South Dakota where our GPS took us on a back road tour for a few hours. Eventually though, we hit Rapid City and the Black Hills of South Dakota. We did the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse thing and then drove through Custer State Park via The Needles Highway. Do not miss that drive. It is spectacular.
We then raced South yesterday morning through Nebraska, trying to avoid the huge blizzard that was suppose to hit Rapid City in a few hours. We arrived in Denver around 2:00 and only saw a few minutes of snow during the drive; most of the six hour drive was fighting high winds though.
We are going to make our way to Las Vegas over the next two days via Utah. We are staying at The Magnolia in Denver and we don’t want to leave. We took advantage of the free suite upgrade and got a very comfortable apartment-style room. Eventually though, we will have to hit the road and deal with light snow and high winds as we make our way out of the Mile High City.
Here are a few pictures of our travels so far. It’s been a heck of a trip.
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