Road Trip Entertainment: Tracking Elevation

Road Trip Sleeping
Road trippin’ in style

 

P and a small portion of a giant wind turbine blade
P and a small portion of a giant wind turbine blade

Yesterday my son and I hitched a ride with my parents to Colorado. We drove for 17 1/2 hours and my son slept for just one of those hours. What did we do to keep from going insane in the car? well, we tracked our elevation as we traveled. My parents started doing this on their earlier road trips out to Colorado using my dad’s handheld GPS  gizmo. It turns out it’s a good travel activity for school-age kids as well!

 

Our Travel in Elevation

 

1. Leaving Green Bay we noted our starting “altitude”, a whopping 593 feet above sea level.

2. Gas station in Iowa

Elevation: 809 feet

Miles driven: 345

Time spent in car: 6 hours

 

Travel fun with gps
The glorious GPS gizmo!

3. Iowa rest stop with ginormous windmill blade

Elevation: 1417 feet

Miles driven: 492

Time spent in car: 8  1/2 hours

 

4. Grand Island, Nebraska gas stop

Elevation: 1968 feet

Miles driven: 718

Time spent in car:  Starting to lose track/becoming delirious

 

5. Passing through Cheyenne, Wyoming

Elevation: 6,062 feet

Miles driven: 1,059

Time spent in car:  17 hours

 

6. Pulling into Fort Collins

Elevation: 5, 003 feet

Miles driven: 1,103

Time spent in car: OMG

It was pretty cool keeping track of our progress in miles, time and elevation. It kind of put things in perspective as we also tracked our progress on a map. It’ll be even cooler when we head into Rocky Mountain National Park later this week!

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