From seeing bison in Custer State Park, to listening to a Cornhuskers game across the entire state of Nebraska, to drinking rum runners in Key West, road trips always provide for memorable experiences and stories to tell. Over the past ten years I’ve had the opportunity to be my own tour guide on trips to nearly all of the lower 48 states in rides including a bad-ass Ford F-350 U-Haul, a “freighted” Mitsubishi Galant, a Honda Civic without air conditioning, and most recently, a 2006 Kia Rio5.

That last vehicle was part of a work assignment, one that included flying to Seattle, attending a Kia press launch in nearby Kirkland, and then driving a 2006 Kia Rio5 back to our offices in Irvine, California. Why this opportunity hadn’t been made available with the $115,000 Jaguar I’d driven just a day before in Las Vegas, I don’t know. But, those were the cards dealt –a Sunset Orange Kia Rio5 and I, together for as long as it took to travel most of the left coast. And, besides, it made for a timely experiment – seeing just what it was like to make a mad dash from Canada to Mexico (almost) in one of the cheapest cars in America, one that promises fuel economy in the mid-30s.