Grand Lake is on the West side of the Rocky Mountain NP, Estes Park about 45 miles away on the Eastern side of the park; We are in Grand Lake and Starbucks is in Estes Park. Denise wants Starbucks because she does and it is a cold, rainy day and we have nothing else on our schedule today. So we decide we will take another drive through the park, see if we can see anymore wildlife and get Denise a Starbucks. That’s the benefit of not having a strick schedule!
As we are leaving the campground Paul states that we need fuel. Fuel is back into town 3 miles or in Estes Park, 45 miles away! How bad do we need fuel? Well the car says we have 60 miles of fuel and the fuel light has not even come on. Ok, we should be able to make it so Paul thinks! I’m thinking, the car is not that reliable in its estimate and the road through the park goes up to 12,000 feet, lots of elevation gain means extra fuel. Paul is sure he is right and we head for Estes Park.
About the time we hit the summit, or half way our fuel range is 1 mile! It’s raining really hard, there is lots of traffic, not a good situation. I was sure we were going to get stranded and who knows how long it is going to take for a tow truck to get up to the summit. The good news is we hit the summit, we can coast. That’s just what Paul did. The guy infront of us was coasting to, although I think it was to look for wildlife.
We descended the mountain and for 20 minutes our fuel range gauge said we have 1 mile left! Pulling into Estes Park, traffic was terrible but we made it to the gas station. We refueled and according to the owners manuel we had about 1.5 gallons left!
Lesson learned is this car gets really good fuel mileage and the fuel light is way more reliable than the fuel range gauge! Lucky Paul. He was sweating!