It’s been weeks since our return home from our trip. So I am going to attempt to sum it all up.
We drove 8416 miles in the truck and did another 590 with Ed and Cheryl in the mini van while touring Yellowstone. That means we traveled 9006 miles on our trip. The average diesel cost was $4.000 per gallon. The most expensive was $4.609 in Cooke City, Montana. The lowest diesel price was $3.619 in Kingman, Arizona. We hated to pay the price for diesel in Cooke City but we were headed on the Bear Tooth Pass and needed a full tank before we headed into the mountains. We drove through 21 different states and camped at 18 different campgrounds on our trip. We traveled through two different countries.
We stayed at all KOA campgrounds along the way and this worked out well. Making reservations online was so easy at KOA and all but one site was a pull through site which made it easier for Scott. The campgrounds were close to major highways (which also meant we heard traffic and trains a lot). The most expensive campground was Niagara Falls and the least expensive was Salina, Kansas with Badlands, South Dakota a close second. All of the campgrounds had pools but we didn’t get to swim as much as we had hoped though.
The one thing I had not planned on was the lack of time once we arrived to our campground each night. Once we arrived we had to unhook, cook and clean up dinner, get ready for bed, check emails and make phone calls, etc. I started our trip by spending this time writing my journal and downloading pictures from the camera. I soon realized I had to do things differently. I charged the laptop at night and spent the time on the road, typing my journal and writing postcards (forgive the messy handwriting on the postcards, please). That freed up a lot more time but still didn’t give us a lot of time in the evenings. We had only 2 campfires on the trip; mostly due to being in the desert and then it being too hot. We had our first fire in Mt Rushmore and then used the wood up at Badlands (before we had to leave South Dakota).
We visited some 20 state and national parks, monuments and memorials. Some of our favorites are: Yellowstone, Bryce, Zion, Arches and Niagara Falls. Scott and I have already started a list of where to return on our next trip. Our first priority has to be getting to Yosemite but there are a lot of places to stop along the way. Originally our trip was for 8 weeks and we were going to spend a week at Yosemite and then travel up the California coast and spend a week along the Pacific Ocean. When Scott couldn’t get that much time off, we had to cut out two weeks. We knew how much we wanted to go to Yosemite, so we cut that out, knowing we would make it happen another year. We also cut out Glacier National Park and we are glad we did that. The Going to the Sun road that we would have traveled to see Glacier National Park did not open this year (due to snow) until Isabella’s birthday, July 13, so we would not have seen most of the park. Having all the snow in the mountains really made our visit to the mountains more spectacular. Don’t think we will quickly forget the snow topped mountains while staying in the desert. All the melted snow made for very flooded and raging rivers.
We saw tons of wildlife but never did see any wolf, coyote or moose. We saw two bears with their cubs and two eagles. Several bunnies hung out at the campgrounds, esp. at our first few campgrounds. We saw more bison than anything and even saw up close a lot of bison calves. We watched an osprey dive into the river and come out with a fish in its talons. We saw buttes, mesas, arches, windows, valleys and mountains. We drove through volcanoes, deserts, mountains, and forests. Can’t count how many times we passed the Continental Divide. We saw bright red, white and green shades of sand.
I have listened to the girls talk to people about their trip and I am glad we did it. They will most likely never admit to us what a great experience it was for them but when I hear them talk about it, I know we did the right thing. We made memories that will last forever and while they may have missed their friends, they experienced family 24/7 for 6 weeks. I had expected a lot of bickering or needing space from each other during our trip but it never happened! It worked out so much better than I could have expected. We did have one very long day of travel (driving from Yellowstone to Devil's Tower) that we should have split up into 2 days but other than that we planned well. It will be years before we can convince the girls to take another cross country trip with us. But we hope to someday do this again.
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