GSPRunner
Senior Member
Thought I'd share a few pics from my Montana trip. Family has a cabin about 30 minutes from West Yellowstone, in the Madison River Valley. All in all, I drove about 2100 miles there, around, and back. 4Runner did pretty well. Was super focused on gas mileage since I just installed a lift and put 285s on so this was the big test. Car was loaded with Girlfriend, Dog, probably 200ish lbs of gear, and towed a drift boat out there. First tank from Seattle to almost Spokane netted me 14.4mpg. Not thrilled at this point. Next tank, lots of mountain passes, AC on, trying to maintain 70mph on flats and hold 60-65 on hills.....13mpg. Really not thrilled. Then things got really weird. Kinda stopped paying attention to gas mileage because I had come to terms that it was going to really blow, and then a day or two later, took the lady to explore Yellowstone Park and the Tetons. Did a lot of 45-55mph driving and at some point looked down and said, "my gas gauge must be broken." At a half tank I had traveled almost 160 miles. On the 13mpg fill up, I had barely cracked 200 miles on a tank. Soooo, continued to drive, filled back up in West Yellowstone, with the re-calculation for the larger tires, netted 305 miles on a tank, and 21.7mpg. Now we're talking. But then the pessimistic in me thought, "ohhh well that was traveling at 45-55mph, not pulling a boat, and with a lot less gear in the back." The real test was driving all the way home. This time, I left the drift boat at the cabin, but still had the Girlfriend, Dog and 200ish lbs. of gear. First tank, 18.7mpg. Second 18.5mpg. At this point, it was getting hot and I had a couple big passes to go over. Last tank, 16.5mpg. Let my girlfriend drive, and through Eastern Washington is was 100-104 degrees. So AC was blasting and she was driving faster than I was. All in all I was super happy with the 4Runner, and with near 200k miles on her, she took the big trip in stride. Wanted to do some wheeling out there, but where I would usually go, some Texas Millionare had bought up thousands of acres and it was all private :sobbing: Fishing could have been better, but it was wacky weather, cloudy streams, and strange bug activity. One of the worst years out there I could remember, but I still had a blast. Anyways, enough babbling, he's a few pics.
