Santa Fe’s Five and Dime Store -Tiled Entrance ©2008

Back home after a great trip out west. Here is our vacation summed up in a few numbers. We managed to spend lots of nickles and dimes, but it was well worth it.

Days of vacation: 16
Days we had precipitation (either rain or snow): 2

Nights temperature dropped below 32˚F: 5
Days temperature rose above 90˚F: 2

Total miles driven: 4452
Most miles driven in one day: 739

Total cost of gas: $1267.02
Highest price we paid for gallon of gas: $3.79 (Fort Morgan, Colorado)
Cheapest price for gallon of gas: $2.48 (multiple stops in Kansas and Iowa) though we saw it for $2.29 in Des Moines, IA – just after we filled the tank.

States visited: 9 (including home state of Wisconsin)
State capital cities we drove through: 7
National parks/monuments visited: 11

Days we were in the mountains: 12
Days we were in a desert: 9
Days we were in deep canyons: 3
Days we were on sand dunes: 3

Nights we camped next to loud rushing water: 1 (Once was one too many.)
Nights we camped so close to tracks we heard train whistles all night long: 7 (There are train tracks everywhere west of the Rockies.)

Photographs taken: 2021
Number of books purchased (mostly from National Park Service): 14

Overall cost (borrowing the rather well-used phrase from our “friend” MasterCard’s famous commercials): Priceless!