Road Trip 2007 Stats

We have been back from our road trip for almost a month, so I apologize for the delay in getting this final posting up. Thanks to the many of you who have read my trip reports and kept up with us. It is an encouragement to hear from many of you and to know that you were praying for us.

I am borrowing an idea from my brother's trip blog and posting a picture of the map of our trip. Following are some interesting (in my opinion) stats from our trip.
Miles driven: 6,598
Length of trip: 30 days and 10 hrs.
Driving days: 21
States we traveled through: 19
Cost of gas: $729.75
Average miles/gal: 29 (We love our Escape.)
Average price of gas: $3.21 per gal.
Overnighted:
- 9 nights in 7 hotels
- 16 nights in 10 homes
- 5 nights at 3 campsites
Nights rained on in campsite: 2
Friends and Family we visited: 84 (spent the night with 36 of these)
US state license plates: 48
(Where were the folks from Rhode Island and New Hampshire? We figured we wouldn't see Hawaii.)
Canadian Provence license plates: 5
Support the Troops Ribbons: 197
Penske Trucks (Joshua's favorite): 75
Tumble Weeds (Jon's selection): 6
Denny's Restaurants: 33 (They don't have these east of New Mexico.)
Cars stuck due to heavy rain: 5 (Not us -- thanks to Jon's great driving.)
Universities we visited: 4
National Parks we toured: 3
Harry Potter books I read or we listened to on CD: 5 (We finished book 6 when we got home, bought book 7 and finished it in 4 days.)
Some of our favorite sites and activities:
- Oatman, AZ -- you gotta love the wild burros
- Grand Canyon Caverns, AZ -- ask Joshua about this place some time.
- Meteor Crater, AZ -- Amazing!
- Butterfly Exhibit at Houston Natural History Museum
- World's Largest Tree house -- visit the Morans in Crossville, TN
- Canoing Chain o Lakes near Ft. Wayne, IN
- Lincoln Museum, Springfield, IL
- Driving through south central Utah
- Bryce Canyon National Park, UT
- Zion National Park, UT -- hiking the Narrows as a family
- Hoover Dam, NV/AZ

This was an amazing experience for our family. We were able to spend time with Jon's entire immediate family as well as his grandpa, 5 cousins and their families. We visited with great friends that we haven't seen in many, many years. What a great way to spend a month -- we highly recommend it, if you get a chance.

Sheryl

Road trip update #13

After breakfast in Boulder City, NV, we got a pretty early start and were at Hoover Dam a little after 9:00. Little did we know what a good move that was. When we left 3 hours later the traffic snaked almost 5 miles back to Boulder City from the dam. It would have taken about an hour just to get to the dam. Since 9/11 there has been a lot of security at the dam -- cars are checked and there are metal detectors in the visitors center. They are also in the process of building a huge new bridge that will cross the Colorado just downstream of the dam. I think they said it would be 1,000 feet above the water. It looks like it will be very high. If you look at the top left-hand corner of the picture to the right, you can see the base of the cement pillars that will hold up the new bridge. The bridge itself is much higher up.

Jon and I visited the dam many years ago and were pleasantly surprised by the new visitors center. They have great displays and lots of hands-on activities for kids. They also still have the tour that takes you down inside the dam. You can see Joshua in front of the generators. It is awesome to see the inside of the dam and realize that it was built during the Great Depression. Amazing.

It was very warm and so after taking the tour, watching a couple videos and viewing the dam from both sides of the bridge, we were ready to go. It was Friday, July 27 and we had decided to get home that day. It was a long drive, but we only hit a bit of traffic coming into Riverside. We jumped on the toll roads off the 91 and were home by 7:00 p.m.

I have one more entry I want to make with stats from our trip. But I don't have all of my numbers figured out yet, so you'll have to wait for next time. Thanks for reading.

Sheryl