Vacation By the Numbers Part 3

Earlier this week we returned home from a fabulous family vacation in Colorado.  It was full of beauty and laughter and hiking and driving and complaining (gotta keep it real, ya know!) and camping and family togetherness.  As usual, I loved the time together -- no matter where we travel, the best part of vacation for me is that we're all together.  Here's a little numerical sum up of our time out west:

• LCMS conventions we randomly happened upon: 1    While traveling through Missouri, we got to our hotel to find a looooong line of people. . .who were all LCMS, there for a district convention! It's a small synod after all!
  
• Miles hiked: 35  Not all of us hiked all 35 miles, but my husband definitely did.  I hiked a decent amount of them, some of which had sneaky misleading info at the trailhead (sometimes 1.4 miles means 1.4 miles straight up a hill (mountain)).  
• Hilarious history lessons: 1  While driving and driving one day, one of the younger kids asked my two eldest kids a question about history.  Somehow those answers evolved into super funny accents and quippy history lessons.  I recorded lots of audio from the front seat for posterity.  I was laughing so hard while also thinking, "Sheesh!  These two really know their history!!" 
• Miles driven: 3741    As usual, they were all driven by my husband, and some were a little nerve-wracking on the descents through the Rockies.  I gave him emotional support by keeping the kids quiet and looking terrified.
• License plates seen:  47!  I think this might be a record for us.  We were shocked to find Hawaii near the end of the trip.  The only three missing were Vermont, Delaware and Rhode Island (which my daughter saw two days after we got home!  But I am a purist and said it didn't count).  We also saw 2 Canadian provinces and 1 Mexican state.
• Number of states passed through: 7 (thought Kansas felt like several states pretending to be one)
• National Parks: 2  Black Canyon and Rocky Mountain National, plus one National Forest
• Number of degrees dropped while driving in a several hour period through Kansas:  44   The temp was as high as 110 degrees, and within a few hours had dropped to 66!
• Friends visited:  4  On the way out west, we stayed with two dear families and on the way home we stayed with another family, all friends from college/seminary.  While we were in Colorado, we randomly were able to meet up with my college roommate and family who also happened to be vacationing out there and were driving right by our campground that day!  We are so thankful for such great friends and the opportunities to nurture those friendships all these years later.  And for the amazing hospitality we were shown!
• Birthdays celebrated:  1  Our fourth child turned 16 while we were in CO and several members of our family celebrated with him by renting an ATV and riding all day in the beautiful (but rainy!) mountains.  They were so muddy at the end of the trip, but they had a great time!
• Wildlife spotted:  4.1  We didn't see as much wildlife this trip, but we did see lots of marmots, deer and elk, and also were able to see a moose and her little one in a lake at dusk.  I added the "0.1" because we did have a hysterical bear sighting (no actual bears were sighted, but the desire was there).
• Theme songs: 1 +  Every year on our adventures, a theme song chooses us.  This year the song that won was Divine Romance by Phil Wickham - we all loved singing together about Christ's love for us and our response to that love! And as a "second" theme song, I submit all of our family favorite Christian artists.  We listened to Matt Redman, Matt Maher, David Crowder and a few others more times than I can count.  Almost everyone in our family loves to sing, and hearing everyone belt out (sometimes with more than one harmony, even!) songs of praise to our Savior fills up my heart.
• Nights in our 21 year old pop-up:  11   The old camper is still holding on, though she is starting to show her age.  We also took a tent for the first time this year, and two of the boys stayed in there most of the time.
• Stints in the big house:  too many   The suburban has three (very uncomfortable) seats in the back.  We made them a bit better on this trip by adding chair pads, but still no one ever wanted to sit back there.  My oldest daughter made a schedule to switch everyone out to keep it fair, which helped a lot.  But still, the back row was about as desirable as jail time (and I know - I took a few turns now and then too!).
• Games of Sorry Revenge played by Dad and our youngest:  11  Every night in the camper, before bed, my husband and our 13 year old played a round of Sorry Revenge.  On the last night, our daughter won the tournament against my very competitive husband.

For Father's Day, we got my husband several camping related items, one of which is the sign below.  We affixed it to the side of the camper each time we stopped, and it always made me smile.  The pop-up is really crowded (even with two boys sleeping in the tent), but I'll take it every time over an empty castle.