We headed out of Birmingham this morning and headed for Dallas.
We stopped at the Mississippi Welcome Center for a cup of coffee and were amazed at the beauty of the facility and the warm, gracious hospitality.
A bit further down the road we came to the exit for the Natchez Trace Parkway and decided to do a little detour. The Parkway is over 400 miles long and runs from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee.
It is just amazingly beautiful.
At one point it followed the shore of a huge reservoir and we stopped for pictures and a little walk.
Getting off the Natchez Trace we followed a two land back road through farming country and encountered a cotton farmer harvesting his cotton.
At Vicksburg we crossed the Mississippi River into Louisiana.
It was a fabulous day and the car again performed flawlessly.
Fuel summary by leg
SAN-PHX 31.5 mpg
PHX-ABQ 29.9 mpg
ABQ-OKC 35.0 mpg
OKC-JAX 30.7 mpg
JAX-W-S 33.7 mpg
W-S-RAL 31.9 mpg (local driving around our destination area)
RAL-COL 35.6 mpg
COL-BIR 29.1 mpg
BIR-SHV 32.6 mpg
The Raleigh to Columbia leg is overstated due to a filling anomoly - somehow I didn't get the tank all the way full, resulting in an abnormally high mileage. The next leg shows abnormally low mileage. The two legs averaged are 32.14 which is what I would expect.
Summary: 4236 miles covered, 132.05 gallons used for a 32.1 mpg overall average