Road Trip Summary

Well, we survived the Great Road Trip of '09. Here's a summary:

We drove through portions of 11 states - Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.

We visited White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Badlands, Black Hills (Including Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, and Reptile Gardens), Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon (North Rim), Painted Desert, and Petrified Forest. Oh, and the Too-Much-Time-On-Your-Hands National Monument, more commonly known as the world's largest ball of twine, in Darwin, Minnesota. And Roswell, New Mexico, whatever that is...

We also visited the homes of five family members.

We travelled 4544.1 miles.

We spent 16 days.

We used 150 gallons of gas.

We took 2709 pictures. That's an average of 246.27 per state. 0.6 per mile. 18.06 per gallon. I don't know if that's very good performance - neither the owner's manual for the car, nor the one for the camera, gives any estimates for pictures-per-gallon.

We bought some Black Hills Gold jewelry (in the Black Hills, of course - a ring and earrings), a Native American flute (in Utah), and a chunk of petrified wood (where else?). We also bought some fun stuff at a thrift store in Elbow Lake, MN.

We saw many examples of that automotive palindrome, "a Toyota." But we did not encounter the fabled Japanese-car graveyard known as "The Subaruins."

We skipped our planned stop in Dodge City, Kansas, for lack of time. We missed the exodus of 400,000 or so bats from Carlsbad Caverns at dusk because there was too much lightning in the area, and the park rangers made us all leave the park. We didn't see any condors at the Grand Canyon or around Marble Canyon, and we passed the turn-off to the Vermilion Cliffs release point well after dark. So, we saw no condors. We also drove the last part of the Badlands, South Dakota, in the dark. So, not everything worked out just as we had hoped.

Pam had fun snapping pictures through the the windshield as we travelled. I had fun enjoying her fun. We'll both have fun looking at all the pictures and weeding out the ones we don't want.

Driving through Colorado, we paralleled the Colorado River for many miles. A day or so later, we saw the Colorado River where it flows through the Grand Canyon. I wondered if we were looking at some of the same water. I know we drove faster than the river runs, but we also stopped at a motel in Torrey, Utah, for the night, and drove a less-direct route. Not to mention stopping a lot more often to take pictures. I couldn't tell from the rim of the Grand Canyon if any of the river water looked familiar.

All-in-all, it was a great trip, and we're looking forward to future road trips, though probably not as long (because it's hard for me to get away from work for that much time in a row), and probably with a tent.