Stargazer's Garage

Motel Cafe Lounge Originally uploaded by istargazer . 2006 Honda Odyssey Fuel Consumption - Road Trip 2007: Vancouver, BC to Thunder Bay, ON to Washington, DC I was working on calculating the fuel consumption data for our 2006 Honda Odyssey Touring during our trip to Oregon when I realized that I had some data from our road trip last year that I don't remember blogging. Unfortunately, the data only includes the first half our trip all the way to Washington, DC but not the data on the way back. I got sidetracked and lost motivation to enter the rest of the information. However, I think the information is valuable so you can check out the specifics for each fill-up here: Honda Odyssey Fuel Consumption - Road Trip 2007 Combined (City/Highway) Fuel Consumption Summary: Vancouver - Thunder Bay - Washington, DC Total distance traveled: 3472.2km + 4689.0km = 8161.2km (6071.11 miles) Total fuel used: 919 L (243 gallons) Average speed: 90 km/h (56 mph) Best observed fuel consumpti...

One of the best things I did to prepare for our road trip across the United States this summer was to subscribe to satellite radio. It was really nice to be able to listen to clear, high-quality sound no matter where we were. Also, the variety of stations available to us meant that we never were short of something to listen to. So imagine my concern when our Stratus radio stopped working altogether half-way through our trip.... I started noticing problems when we reached Thunder Bay, Ontario. After we had made the border crossing, the radio reset itself: presets erased, no subscription registration. After a few minutes, it re-registered itself and I was able to listen to music again. While we were in Thunder Bay, I was also observing strange behavior with our GPS so I just brushed off the radio problems to some sort of "satellite Bermuda Triangle phenomenon." As we got farther from the time zone border, the satellite radio continued to reset itself periodically. The annoying...

One of the things I really appreciated during our road trip to Washington, DC was the ceramic window tint that was installed on the Honda Odyssey just before we left. Ceramic tint has excellent heat rejection properties that made a significant difference in our comfort, especially with the 35° C and above weather. One thing that I didn't think about was tinting the sun roof.... The way the sunroof is positioned in the Odyssey, any sunshine that came through would feel uncomfortably intense, so much so that I would have the shade closed almost all of the time--even here in Vancouver. I didn't have that problem at all in our Toyota Sequoia. So when I took my dad in to get his 2007 Infiniti G35 to get tinted, I brought the van in to get the sunroof done also. It only cost about $30 and even though it doesn't look much darker, I can now keep the cover open and let more light in without getting uncomfortable. Here's my original post about getting the Pinnacle Formula One cer...

I apologize for the lack of up dates on this blog, especially since the last time I posted I was somewhere in South Dakota! We've finished our 6-week road trip across the United States and are now back in Vancouver. It was an amazing trip and we had a really good time. So good in fact that I miss being on the road. I don't know why I stopped posting mid-trip. I think I sensed that the end was coming and I wanted to savor each moment. Even though our evenings only consisted of trips to the hotel swimming pool and Survivor Man marathons on Discovery, I still enjoyed it. In fact, we got hooked on the Discovery Channel and the Food Network during our hotel stays and we promptly added it to our cable subscription when we got home! :LOL: I've got lots of new pictures and I plan on uploading them, but I'm not quite ready, yet. That time will come. Hopefully, this post shows that it may be sooner than later :0)

Driving from Oacoma to Keystone yesterday was mostly a sight-seeing day with visits to the Badlands National Park and the Wall Drug store in Wall, SD. The kids are a little distracted in that picture because we were talking to some people who were sitting on a bench outside the store. Today will be another short-drive day so that we can spend time visiting Mount Rushmore.

Sorry for the lack of posts the last few days--they've been quite busy. We are currently on the last leg of our cross-continent trip, back on the road and heading homeward to the west coast. Here's a brief summary of what we've done. More details and pictures will follow when I get time to upload everything. Because of the intense heat and humidity in the DC area last week, taking the Metro and walking around the National Mall all day long was not that appealing. Also, the National Museum of American History, one of the museums I really wanted to see, is currently closed for renovations and will not be re-opened until next summer.... So what we did instead was take a side trip (3 hours one-way) to Ocean City, Maryland and taking a dip in the Atlantic Ocean. We spent the rest of our time shopping at various outlet malls. I liked Potomac Mills the best because it was air conditioned and had a lot of shops. In fact, it was so big, we went again during the week. We also went to...

Built in 1976, the Enterprise was the first space shuttle orbiter but never flew in space. It was used for series of atmospheric test flights including free-flights and landings to test systems and aerodynamic performance. I have quite a few more pictures from the Air and Space Museum that I have yet to upload, and those will come. However, our time in DC is drawing to a close and we'll be getting back on the road soon. Yesterday, to combat the 100 degree F weather, we made a 3-hour excursion to sandy beaches of Ocean City, MD and had a swim in the Atlantic Ocean!

The World War II B-29 bomber, Enola Gay.

The World War II Boeing B-29 Superfortress: Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

The National Museum of Natural History. One of the (many) DVDs that we brought on our road trip was Night at the Museum (2006) with Ben Stiller. Visiting the Natural History museum on the National Mall here in Washington, DC was a lot of fun because (even though I think the movie set was based upon the American Museum of Natural History in New York) so many things looked like it came straight out of the movie. Things like the main rotunda, the cave man exhibit, the Mammals, the T-Rex--they even had a replica Easter Island statue, "Me no dum-dum. You dum-dum. You bring me gum-gum?" More pictures to come.

The Lincoln Memorial was built to resemble a Greek temple. It has 36 columns, one for each state at the time of Lincoln's death. Click below for interior pictures.... The statue of Lincoln was carved from 28 interlocked blocks of crystalline white Georgia marble and is 19' high and 19' wide. The south wall of the monument is inscribed with the Gettysburg Address. It's interesting what you can learn from the back of post cards! ;0) Inside the memorial, the 12-24 mm wide-angle lens I got came in really handy. I didn't bother to put the circular polarizer on at all because I can't figure out an efficient way to work it.

While the Honda Odyssey was being serviced at Sport Honda (details to come) , we took the Metro down to the National Mall. The new wide-angle lens I bought was perfect in this situation.... This is the view of the Washington Monument from the top of the steps at the Lincoln Memorial.

Today is a "take-it-easy" day-- relatively --so I'm finally catching up with some posts I missed. The final drive into Washington, DC was relatively uneventful especially compared to the day before ( Day 20: Black River Falls to Fremont ). Plus, sensing that we were getting closer to our destination--we made up some time at the end. *** Note: The summary below includes arriving at our destination and going out to have dinner at a local restaurant. Distance and average speed data will be affected. Day's Summary: Fremont, Ohio to Gaithersburg, MD Total distance traveled: 682.5 km Estimated travel time (GPS): 6 hours, 21 min. Total elapsed driving time: 6 hours, 34 min. Average fuel consumption: 11.7 L/100 km Average speed: 97 km/h Highest observed outside temp: 30° C Number of confirmed V1 bogies: 2 Click below for pictures.... Road Trip Day 21 Pictures

After some careful research, I decided that a super-wide angle lens would be the next purchase for me (vs. a general purpose telephoto). The Tokina AT-X Pro DX 12-24 mm F4 lens ($500) is almost half the price of the similar wide-angle Nikon ($900) and has gotten good reviews on it's performance. Being strictly a beginner hobbyist, I thought it was a great choice. I've had a couple of days now to try it out and learn about it's advantages and disadvantages.... ...which I'll post more details about in another post-- sorry for the tease! On Monday we went to the National Zoo and I found the wide-angle lens to be very unsuited for the situation. And I got only a couple of acceptable pictures from that day. Here's one of my favorites: The biggest advantage of the wide-angle lens is that it allows me to get the entire shot I want without have to step back so far away. Yesterday we went to see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and I was much happier with my...

If you notice the date of this post, it's obvious that I'm several days behind and I apologize. We arrived in the Washington, DC area Friday night and have been busy with a number of things so I'm just now trying to catch up. The drive from Black River Falls to Fremont, Ohio (just east of Toledo) on Thursday was a long one because we made a couple of extra stops in Madison, WI and Chicago, IL. Also, reaching more populated areas meant the speed limits dropped and traffic increased. Oh, yeah, we also had to drive through a couple of thunder storms. Day's Summary: Black River Falls to Fremont, Ohio Total distance traveled: 881.2 km Estimated travel time (GPS): 7 hours, 44 min. Total elapsed driving time: 9 hours, 6 min. Average fuel consumption: 11.5 L/100 km Average speed: 97 km/h Highest observed outside temp: 28° C Number of confirmed V1 bogies: 3 Click below for more details of the day.... Our first big stop was to find a Circuit City store somewhere along our...

We ended our lay-over in Thunder Bay today and continued our road trip to Washington, D.C. Two years ago we did this leg of the trip in one night and got to Indiana before we stopped for the night. This time we took it easy: we left late and stopped early in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, about an hour south of Eau Claire. Last time, Eau Claire made such an impression on me because the highway suddenly disappeared and a large town suddenly popped up. I had never heard of "Eau Claire" before and having to drive through it I thought it was very quaint and wholesome. We even stopped for some ice cream cones at the time. I remember it well, because it was my great idea to take the cones outside so the kids could enjoy the sunshine--and consequently watch their ice cream drip like leaking faucets in the 30° C heat. This time, however, we drove on a newly completed expressway and it cut a swath right through Eau Claire. We must have saved 15-20 minutes of driving time. Kind of sad, ...

We stopped at this Cenex station in Rice Lake, Wisconsin for an emergency bathroom break. Luckily enough, it was the first gas station I found that carried NOS energy drink in a bottle. Needless to say, I bought 3 bottles (and a bag of Wisconsin cheddar cheese curds) for the road :0)

I've taken lots of photos while we've been here in Thunder Bay. You can find most of them here on my Flickr Map . However, not all of them are geotagged, so check here for my complete Thunder Bay set . I've got lots more to add (the most recent ones) and I'll do that as soon as possible. We spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday enjoying the hospitality of some family friends who own a beautiful lake-shore camp. The girls had a blast cooling off in the water and it was the perfect way to end our time here in Thunder Bay. Tomorrow we will be leaving TB and heading back on the road south to continue our trip to Washington, D.C. Our next stop: Wisconsin!

We went to the Thunder Bay Museum earlier this week. On Tuesdays they offer free admission--which is an awesome deal for a family of six. It's home to the Albertosaurus, a cast skeleton that was found in the province of Alberta.... No, no, no--not that one! This one: