Numbers from The Great Trip of 2009

Number the Days

37 days - days of the trip (including the start and end days)

45 days - days of the initially proposed trip

8 days - days we cut off the end of the trip

6 days - days spent in Yellowstone

9 days - long days spent in the car (a long day is defined here as 8 hours or more)

3 days - longest stretch of consecutive long days in the car (our first 3 days of the entire trip)

8 days - days spent in Utah

12 days - days spent in California


Number the Hikes

3 - hikes taken

10,243 ft. - elevation of Mt. Washburn in Yellowstone National Park (hike #1)

11,749 ft. - elevation of Mt. Timpanogos (hike #2)

1,488 ft. - elevation CHANGE on the Angel's Landing hike (hike #3), over about 2 1/2 hours

5 - people who have fallen and died hiking Angel's Landing since 1997

47th - Mt. Timpanogos's place on the "Most Prominent Mountain in the Contiguous United States" list

0% - percentage of people who went on the longer Mt. Washburn hike who said they'd do it again

100% - percentage of people who went on the shorter Mt. Washburn hike who said they'd do it again


Number the Miles

13 - states traveled through (or stayed in, or both)

6,220 - total miles traveled

thousands - number of bugs killed by our van

5 - Yellowstone postcards sent home to friends

2 - packages sent home from Elijah to Andrew

1 - package sent home from Elijah to Daddy

100% - percentage of strangers that the kids told all about our summer trip


Yellowstone and its Geysers

$120 - about how much we spent on a campsite in Yellowstone (for 6 days of camping)

2 - National Parks attended

3,468 square miles - size of Yellowstone National Park

75% - percentage of the world's geysers that Yellowstone contains

90 - 184 feet - height of Old Faithful

92 - minutes between Old Faithful eruptions (approximately)

150 - 200 feet - height of Grand Geyser

7 - 8 hours - average interval between Grand Geyser eruptions

over 300 feet - height of Steamboat Geyser

4 - years since last Steamboat Geyser eruption (on May 23, 2005)


Yellowstone and its Animals

2300 to 4500 - number of bison in Yellowstone National Park

15% - percentage of bison that live in Yellowstone, of all the North American herds

less than 1% - percentage of bison that live in Yellowstone, when livestock herds are included

400,000 - number of bison raised as livestock (and then, likely, served to you on a plate)

2 - mornings an elk was inches from our cabin site, and hence stalled our departure (totally worth the delay!)

124 - number of wolves in the park in 2008

47 - decrease in the number of wolves from 2007 to 2008

0 - number of moose, wolves, and mountain goats that we saw in Yellowstone


Ending Numbers

12 days - after the trip was fully over, days before Miciah was asking to go back to Yellowstone