A Clever Way To Shave Miles From Your Long Wyoming Drive

How many miles would you save if you drove the inside lane on the interstate?

HOLD ON! I swear this gets interesting.

Long road trips are common if you live in a state like Wyoming. We really have no choice.

Because of this, we come up with many different ways of entertaining ourselves, from radio to podcasts. Hopefully, we are traveling with someone we actually want to talk to.

I came up with a little "science" experiment the last time I had to drive south for a couple of hours on Interstate 25 in Wyoming. It kept me entertained.

I started a mileage tracker on my car dash when leaving Casper Wyoming with a planned stop in Chugwater for lunch.

On the way down, every time the interstate highway turned, I drove the inside lane.

NOTE: I did this on a light traffic day when I was just about the only driver on the highway. It was early morning. Really early.

Theoretically, this would save me some travel distance.

A few weeks later I had to make this trip again.

This time I would drive "normally" according to the rules.

I would drive in the right-hand lane unless there was a need to pass a slower vehicle.

I was driving the speed limit. I swear officer, I was.

At the off-ramp to Chugwater, the mileage was checked again.

Nearly everyone who had been told about this experiment, including several listeners of Wyoming's morning talk show, Wake Up Wyoming, agreed that driving the inside lane would save maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile, at most.

Those estimates were way too short.

Driving the inside lane on the turns, from Casper to Chugwater, had saved 2 miles.

EVERYBODY was stunned.

There are a lot of long turns between Casper and Chugwater. That's what made the difference.

Someone driving the straight flat roads of Nebraska would not have saved anywhere near that much.

I have several more trips to take between Cheyenne and Casper in the next couple of months, so I'll run this experiment a couple more times to confirm my findings and post the results.

FOR THE RECORD! - I am NOT saying that we should all start driving on the inside lane when taking a turn on the interstate. This was just a thought experiment. Please let's only use the left lane for passing.