i'm ba-aaack!

...having set a new personal record for miles driven in one day(-ish) : about 660 - Oakley KS to Amarillo TX - 10am Fri to 5pm Fri, Amarillo TX to Fort Worth TX - 11pm Fri to 5am Sat.

Other numbers of (dubious) note:

• Grand total of miles driven this vacation: 4360 (ranks 3rd on my list)
• Number of pictures taken: 1265 (hooray digital!)
• Number of short detours just to take pictures: at least two dozen
• Number of states I visited for the first time: 5 - ID, MT, SD, IA, NE
• Number of annoying billboards seen on I-90 in South Dakota: eleventy-jillion-and-seventy-three
• Number of presidential faces seen on Mount Rushmore: 4
• Number of minutes before sundown I arrived at Devil's Tower: 16
• Number of fat old motorcyclists seen: several hundred
  
• Number of unreachable bug bites around my left shoulder blade: 4
• Number of double rainbows seen: 3
• Number of drives along the SD Badlands: 2
• Average number of minutes per morning I wasted watching the Weather Channel show anything except actual weather: 23
  
• Number of most-frequented motel: 6
• Number of inexplicable new holes in my car's front right wheel well: 1
• Number of spam emails received in those 11 days I was gone: 735