S2000 Trip Overview

The Plan

For many years I've wanted to drive along the Pacific coast from border to border.  I had driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles several times and had been on some of the roads along the coast near the California - Oregon border, but that's all.  Early in the year 2000, I was able to purchase a Honda S2000 sports car and now I really wanted to make the drive, with the top down all the way.  When I was able to take a few months off from work I saw my chance and started to make plans.

With the plan to drive top down as much as possible, weather was a concern.  I wanted to start as close to summer, but before the tourist season officially started.  The optimal time seemed to be the second and third weeks of May, returning the week before the Memorial Day weekend.  This was still too early to get to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon or the middle section of Glacier National Park, which were both still closed for the winter.  (At least I didn't go in June when a late snowfall buried the Yellowstone area.)

Since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm near the mid-point along the coast.  I decided that since I would have to travel both directions, I might as well experience some different roads on one half of the trip.  I have family in Utah, so I planned to go through Salt Lake City on the reverse half of the trip and show off the car, plus it offered a few nights of free lodging.

Once I started looking for routes to take for the inland part of the trip, it became obvious that I would be going through most of the western states.  I then decided that I could go a little more out of my way and get to all 11 western states during the trip.  Then I noticed that I would be driving through a few national parks and near many more, so I altered the route a little more to visit 12 national parks.  I now had my plan for the trip.

Another goal, since I would be driving an open sports car, was to avoid driving on freeways as much as possible.  I really don't enjoy driving the S2000 on freeways, at least at legal speeds, so it was my goal to drive on the two-lane roads wherever possible.  I managed to be quite successful at this, driving on only a few hundred miles of freeway in 5700 miles.  All the rest was on two-lane roads, which are much more interesting.
The initial plan was to head toward the Mexican border on Monday morning, starting in Half Moon Bay, then drive through the lower western states, arriving in Provo, Utah on Friday.  The driving was expected to be about 350 miles per day, with plenty of time to stop and see things and no driving outside of daylight hours.  Saturday and Sunday would be spent with relatives in Utah, then off again on Monday morning for the northern half, driving closer to 450 miles per day and arriving back home on Saturday evening.  Total mileage was estimated to be between 4200 and 5000.

As it turned out, the total trip was 5700 miles and basically involved driving all day long, every day.  None of the days on the first half of the trip were less than 475 miles.  There was time to stop and see things, but most of the stops were quick ones.

I met my goal of visiting all 11 western states and Canada, and managed to visit 12 national parks plus one national recreation area and two state parks.  I had planned to finish the trip at the same place along the coast as where I started, in Half Moon Bay, but gave up on that when it started to get dark on Saturday night and I was still 100 miles from home.

The Honda S2000

The Honda S2000 was an excellent car for this trip with a few minor exceptions.  There is not a lot of luggage space in the trunk and no other storage space inside.  This is easily dealt with by not taking much and making sure everything is flexible.  Since I drove alone on all but the last three days of the trip, when my wife joined me, I kept some stuff in the front seat.

The seat does not provide enough back support, at least for someone over six feet tall, to be used all day every day in comfort.  I ended up putting a towel in the small of my back much of the time to overcome this.  Also, for tall people, the seatbelt can rub the left shoulder in a painful manner after a few days.  That is all I can find to complain about, though.

There are many real nice things about the S2000 on 2-lane roads.  The engine has a pretty strong powerband up to 6000 rpms or so, then it changes camshaft profiles in VTEC mode and suddenly has a lot more power.  I found myself eagerly antipating passing opportunities when I could rev the engine to its 9000 rpm redline and just blast past slower cars.

Being a serious sports car, steering is quick and precise.  The cornering limits of the car are somewhere around 0.90 g, so it is a lot of fun on twisty mountain roads.  All of the national parks, at least in the west, have great twisty roads both in them and nearby.  A few of the roads were so nice that I was tempted to drive back through them the other direction just for the pleasure of spending more time on them.  My number one goal of the trip was to drive on interesting roads and I feel I was very successful in that regard.  It was a lot of fun.

The stock Honda S2000 has quite a bit of wind turbulence inside with the top down.  I had added a Mingster Aeroscreen which helps make the cockpit quite calm at any reasonable speed with the top down.  Out in the desert, with the temperature over 100 degrees, I ended up using the air conditioner and didn't bother raising the top.  It worked well enough as long as I wasn't behind a large truck, which messes up the airflow.  That might seem like quite a waste, but it uses the same amount of energy as running the air conditioning compressor with the top up, it's just not quite as cold inside.

Overall, the car got 27.6 miles per gallon for the total trip.  However, the engine needs the highest octane gas available, so it costs a little more than most cars that get the same mileage.  I've summarized the mileage for those interested the differences due to temperature and altitude.  Personally, I can't figure out what gave me better mileage on some parts of the trip over others.

The States

Of the 11 states I visited, New Mexico was the only one I hadn't been to before.  There were 5 national parks, of the 12 I visited, that I had not been to previously.  I had also never been to British Columbia before.  I had initially considered driving into Mexico, but a little research on the web about taking a car into Mexico convinced me that it would be a bad idea.  I had been in Mexico in February and December anyway.

It's interesting that each state seems to have a slightly different personality.  I didn't spend much time in Nevada, New Mexico, or Idaho, but I've spent plenty of time in Idaho and way too much time in Nevada (being between California and Utah).  I'll have to go back to New Mexico some time to get a better feel for the state.

The National Parks

Although I visited 12 national parks in all, I really didn't spend enough time in any of them, which is a shame.  Every one of them deserves one or two full days and Yellowstone deserves a full week for a proper visit.  Even with a quick visit, though, I enjoyed what I did see in each of the National Parks.  An area of the country has to be quite spectacular to be designated as a national park.  Every one of them was worth seeing and I would like to find a way to go back to each and every one of them to spend more time there.

Photography

I wanted to document the trip well.  I had recently purchased a Canon PowerShot S10 digital camera and also took along my older Canon EOS 35mm camera with two zoom lenses.  I had originally hoped to have a laptop computer along so that I could download the images each evening and maybe even write up a web page for each day as the trip progressed.  That proved infeasable, but I was able to borrow an IBM Microdrive for the camera, so there was virtually no limit to the number of pictures I could take with the digital camera.  Beside, I was really too tired to write up a summary most evenings anyway.

I ended up taking over 900 shots, with many that I really like.  Notes were taken as I drove along to keep track of where I was and the impressions I had at each place I went.  I noted the time and trip mileage as I went, in case anyone else wants to make a similar trip and would like to know how long or how far a particular section is.

Day By Day Summary

I've summarized the trip using one day per page.  Small pictures are used on each page to make the page interesting, but reasonably quick to load.  Larger pictures will be added as space permits, available by clicking on the small pictures.  The following are links and summaries of each day of the trip: The car was quite grungy when I got back.  Most of it cleaned up nicely, but there are a few hard to access nooks and crannies that will probably never be as clean again as they were before the trip.  My dealer had recommended that I replace the front tires when it was serviced before the trip, but they worked well enough and weren't completely worn out when I got done (at least no cord was showing).  However, I really need a new set of tires now.

I've generated a site map that allows direct access to any of the pages that are available.  Many of the pages have cross links to other pages to make it easier to find whatever particularly interest you.  I put these web pages together because I wanted to, but I'm hoping it will provide inspiration to others to get out and see some of our beautiful country.  Beside, this provides evidence that I've done at least one adventurous thing in my life.  When are you going to do something you've dreamed of doing?

If you have comments or suggestions about this web site, feel free to send me an e-mail note.  I'm especially interested if this inspires others to make similar trips.

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Copyright (c), 2001 by Scott R. Nelson
Page last updated July 16, 2001
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