WDM, IA - A Lollipop Loop With the Highs and Lows

Today it’s as hot as ‘Billie Blue Blazes’ - well, at least that’s what my mother used to say. I find myself, every now and again, saying something, slapping my forehead and saying: ‘you sound just like your mother.’ I suppose there’s a really good reason for that. She had some other phrases like:

        ‘flubbed the dub’

        ‘mell of a hess’ (and that’s about as far into swearing as she would go)

        ‘I’m not as dumb as I look’ (this obviously begs for a smart answer and who better to give it than me? my retort to that was: ‘Thank God’ - and I said that out loud only once.)

        ‘that just shows to go you’

However, back to the main idea. Yes, it was pretty hot out so Gary and I hunkered down in the lower level. I was working on our pictures from the last days of our trip while Gary was summarizing some of the data from out trip.

        12,540 miles traveled both in the Jeep and the RV

         5,431miles traveled in the RV

         249 nights camped which is our longest trip ever

         35 separate stops where we spent at least 1 night

        We’ve got a lot of other stats but they get really boring. Everyone wants to know how many miles we get to the gallon with our RV. Well, remember, it’s 35’ long and is towing a 4000-lb Jeep. We’re about 30,000 lbs altogether and get about 8 mpg. Doesn’t sound too good does it? Well, you also need to remember that we spent no money on gas when we were in the Phoenix area for 2 months or in San Diego for 1 month or in San Francisco for 1 month. Now, you can do the math using the total miles we traveled, the mileage we get and come out with about 678 gallons of diesel for the trip. At $4.00 a gallon average, that’s $2751 for gas for the RV for 9 months. I read that the average for gas per family is $4000 a year so we’re within the average.

Here’s a cool map of our trip. If this were a hiking trail, it would be called a ‘lollipop loop.’ We like loops which mean that we don’t just turn around and go back the same way we hiked in.

And, here’s a cool chart showing the elevations at which we drove in the RV. On the left is West Des Moines and on the right is again West Des Moines since we began and ended in the same place. What a coincidence. Our lowest elevation was in Death Valley when we were at -228’. Our highest elevation was 12,575’ when we were crossing the Rockies near Vail, Colorado.

Gary uses his IPhone as we walk along with an app he bought to track our travels. At the end of the day, we know how far we went, what elevation we attained and various other statistics. He then plots them on a map so we can see where we’ve gone. Here are 2 views of the walks we took in San Francisco. The first map is of the main city itself and we sure did cover lots of those streets. The map makes it look as if we’re drunk as skunks the way it weaves around. Never fear - that’s just the way the map goes. Or maybe we look like we’re mice in a maze. The second map is of the whole city and you can see our walk around Golden Gate Park and Golden Gate Bridge and the coastline at the top of the map and to the left. We’re both due for a new pair of shoes.

The other question we get asked most often is: ‘What place do you like the best?’ Well, that’s hard to answer. We like them all. We’re pretty easy to please and can just about always find something about a place that warrants a stay. Even Deming, NM, where the wind blows constantly and where the signs along the interstate say: ‘Caution: Dust Storms May Exist’ has a neat museum and a cool walking path. Yep, we like them all. But - there are so many places yet to discover and to like. Have I already begun to plan our next trip? Does a skunk have stripes?

What I don’t have a chart of is how much we learned, how much fun we had and how many neat people we met on our trip. It’s like the old charge card ad: ‘Priceless.’