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To all long-distance Packard drivers and Road-Trippers in general:

This thread was inspired by Kev when we started to talk about past and future ideas for Road Trips, especially those dealing with Route 66 or other famous routes. I'd especially like to hear about Lincoln Highway and Highwy 61 trips, which I would like to do someday.

I thought it would be nice to open it up here for discussion of Packard Road Trips as well as trips taken or planned in other, undoubtedly inferior makes.

Funny stories, mishaps, and narrow escapes are fair game, as well as carefully planned and marvelously successful journeys.

We could include:

1. Longest Road Trip in a Packard!
2. Best mileage you recorded in a day.
3. Farthest distance traveled in one day.
4. Fastest average speed in one day.
5. Funniest police encounter... traffic ticket from admiring cop, etc.
6. Special things that happened because you were on the road in a Packard

The first 4 include several sub-categories for including "awards" for brass era, pre-war, post-war, and V8 models.

Road-trippin'-- and American tradition that could be in danger if we don't do our part. The hell with the economy, we can travel like Okies and survive on the kindness of strangers... hey, another category!

Hope this strikes some as good winter entertainment.

(I'll wait for someone else to start before blopping my own little adventure here. It's not a Packard story, but I've got a lot of them from when I was a kid.)

Here's a pic some of you might recognize--maybe from personal experience:

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Great topic. Can't wait to here some of the stories!

Kev,

Go ahead and copy your Route 66 posts here from the Project Blogs thread if you like. They really were the inspiration for this thread.

Yeah, it does seem like a great topic. I don't have any great stories but I'll break the ice with a couple of mundane and uneventful "long" tours.

Twice I've driven my 56 Caribbean convertible to PAC events in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State from here in New Jersey. The first was the 2001 National and the second was the Henry Joy tour this past year. I'd guess each trip was about 1000 miles round trip, give or take. Interstates mixed with state highways up and back, speeds between the 40s and 70 or so. Gas mileage about 14.5 mpg. On the second of the two trips (2008) I experienced some fuel starvation problems, annoying but not dibilating, and otherwise uneventful.

The longest tour I've driven a Packard on was the 1993 Packard National in Ashevelle, North Carolina where I had a summer home nearby. I took my 1948 Custom 8 (2252) and guess it was about 2000 miles or so, round trip. Drove at mostly Interstate speeds except for local driving and quite a few miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway, highway mileage about 18 as I recall. I know some of you will have a problem believing this, but the drive was uneventful and the car performed flawlessly even though I had a 6-volt car without electric fuel pump, electric radiator fan, alternator, or radial tires. I laugh now at remembering all the spares I carried in the trunk, probably about 300 lbs worth, even though I needed none of them. I probably even took a set of rod bearings and a pan gasket! On any tour of over a few hundred miles I always take a spare fuel pump, belts and hoses, water pump, generator, regulator, coil, etc. and a good tool box with lots of odd hardware, but outside of the fuel pump on the Henry Joy tour I've never needed spares on a tour. With the 56 I also always carry a spare push button actuator and relay but again, never needed.

This summer's Henry Joy tour will be a bit shorter, to Saratoga Springs, New York. Probably about 450 miles or so round trip, and I'm planning on taking the 34 Eight though I'll have to avoid the New York State Thruway up and back as about 50 mph is the best comfortable speed for this car and with most everyone else doing 70 or better, it's just a risk not worth taking. Besides, the scenery will be better on more local roads.

The longest trip I have taken with my 1947 Super Clipper is to a small town show about 50 miles south of Duluth Minnesota for the past 3 years. The round trip is about 500 miles and all but 80 miles is along the shore of Lake Superior on two lane Highway US 61. So far I have not had any problems except the fuel pump bolts worked loose once and oil leaked down onto the exhaust pipe causing a fair amount of smoke. I have driven US 61 all the way to Louisiana but in my '81 Ford Crown Victoria.
On of my favorite highways is US30 across Nebraska. I first drove along it in 1980 on a Honda 750 motorcycle but last September on returning from a trip to Utah in my small motorhome I drove much of the way across Nebraska on it from the Wyoming border to Kearney. What a wonderful drive. With almost all the east-west traffic on I-80 I found the road almost deserted so that stress free cruising at 50 mph was possible and the small towns with the old style gas stations and art deco motels from the bygone era simply delightful. I would like to go back and do the trip in the Packard someday.

Copied from my project Blog:

I grew up in the High Desert of Calif, and the remains of Route 66 ran though my town. So I know the remains of it are pretty fragmented. 66 went from little town to little town following the topography of the local area. When they built the interstate system of I-15 in Calif and I-40 across the country, this pretty much drew a straight line bypassing a lot of these little towns (aka the plot of the Disney Movie "Cars"). So coming down the I-15 from Nevada to Calif across the Mojave desert, you will see that the 66 cross the interstate then meanders into the mountains, then eventually back across the 15, and sometime they are the same road. There are also orphan sections of road that really go nowhere anymore. So I will plan it out and work in as many appropriate side trips as I can. There are some great little towns out there that the traveling masses just pass on my at 80mph. One of my favorite little towns is Oatman, AZ (near Bullhead City/Laughlin, NV). Basically an old mining town in the foothills, and now tourist ghost town. Route 66 literally runs right down the middle of this little one street town. There are wild mules/donkeys that roam around. A great piece of Americana that is missed by the folks traveling I-40 10 miles away.

It would probably take the trip in the spring while the temps are still comfortable in the desert sections. But that is still at least 2 years away.

We drove our '52 Mayfair on a VMCCA tour last summer that took us 1300 miles round trip. Traveling from NW Ohio, our destination was Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario, Canada. (The miles we traveled on the gigantic ferry that we shared with several semi trucks, didn't even count!) The funny thing that happened was shortly after we started driving on the island, our GPS stopped working . . . it just seemed to freeze. My buddy turned his on and it was frozen to a fixed location too. We looked at each other and agreed that we must have reached "the end on the earth!" Actually, the following day the GPS's were working again. Maybe it was sun spots or something!

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More on this later...

Great stories!

Owen, there is nothing at all wrong with tours that go "right." This may often be the case here, since most of the stories will be about trips in Packards, and testimony to their famed reliability. (Don't leave out the "horror stories," though. They're always good fun.

Ever get done with a trip where you sweated whether the vehicle would break down or not, carrying spare parts and tools, then get home after driving 1000 mi. or so? Owen has related that experience well. I had it myself once, and literally told the car in my driveway: "Why was I so worried about you?" It's a good feeling.

Clipper47, thanks for the tips on getting through Nebraska. I've done the freeway several times and it is a colossal bore! I knew there had to be something better to see in Nebraska. Also, congratulations on navigating 61 from Canada to New Orleans. Did you start at Thunder Bay and go all the way to N.O.? Also interested in that show--50 miles south of Duluth is about 70 miles north of where I live.

Denny, naw, it wasn't sunspots, it was the day the earth stood still.

Guy, Highway 61 in Ontario begins in Thunder Bay and continues on the US side at the Pigeon River near Grand Portage, Minnesota. There were sections of 61 I missed in Minnesota but picked it up south of the Cities and followed it pretty much along the Mississippi to New Orleans. It was a great trip. I am very much interested in US history so on my trip to Utah I tried to follow some of the Oregon Trail and Mormon Trail routes both in Nebraska and Wyoming.
The little car show I enjoy is at the little town of Barnum Minnesota. It is a real good time with the church folks putting on a pancake breakfast It's like stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting.
Denny, I lived on Manitoulin Island for 3 years at the village of Sandfield in the 1960s and worked the area north of there for 6 years as a game warden so I know the area and the "rock" very well. The ferry ride is usually very enjoyable and the people are very friendly. In the 60's it was a bit like living in the 19th century.

Clipper47, they told us that the island isn't what it used to be. The tourist trade is way down mainly because the fishing isn't very good any more. The people were very nice and appreciative of our interest in the area. It was a nice place to visit but I would really not want to live there . . . not much going on at all!