2024 White Sands National Park Trip - Statistics

        Total Trip


Total Days 12
Days on the Road 12
Total Miles 3833
Average Miles/Day 320
Low Mileage Day 72
High Mileage Day 397

        Gas and Mileage


Total Gas Stops 31
Total Gallons 121.8
Total Gas Cost $437.14
Average Miles/Gallon 31.48
Average Cost/Gallon $3.50
Low Cost/Gallon $2.699 - Tularosa, NM
High Cost/Gallon $4.219 - Kittitas, WA

        General


Total States Visited 7
Total National Parks Visited 3
Total National Monuments Visited 1
Lowest Temperature 52.2°
Highest Temperature 101.5° 
Lowest Elevation 0'
Highest Elevation 7,957'
Days with Rain 1
Nights in Motels 11
Average Cost/Night $146.70
Low Cost Night $94.20
High Cost Night $205.73
Wireless Connections 11
Wired Connections 0
No Connections 0


Web Statistics


I don't usually look at the website statistics since I don't share the links with anyone and don't usually complete all of the pages until after we returned home. These pages are really for our own use anyway so I'm not that concerned with  how many people view or follow our pages. That being said I did take a screen shot of the new Google GA4 Analytics for our pages. In reality, I haven't figured out how to filter out my personal traffic when we are on the road so a lot of that traffic may be my own.

Final Thoughts and Future Plans


Frequently we have a break of some kind during a trip but we didn't really take a break and we were pretty tired when we finally got back home. It didn't help that there was an accident on I-405 and we were stuck in a barely moving traffic jam under a steaming sun for about 45 minutes. The worse thing was that we were only about 15 miles from home. By the time we got home we were both soaking wet. This was without a doubt the worse part of the trip.

Speaking of the trip, we were on a mix of Interstates, US highways and state highways. One of the worse roads was I-70. There were actually more semis on the road than cars and it was painful every time we encountered a truck attempting to pass another truck. The other really bad road was 491 in New Mexico. The road is seriously in need of maintenance. The rest of the roads weren't too bad.

The plan from the beginning was to visit White Sands National Park since it is one of the few parks, at least in the west, that we haven't visited. We thought we would arrive at the park mid day and that would give us a chance to check out the park and then come back the next day to spend more time in the park. That changed once we got to the park. The park wasn't crowded and it only took a short time to tour the visitor center and view the short video about the park. Then we decide to ride the loop road to see what we could see. What we didn't know was that the road was only paved the first 5 miles or so and then was packed sand. The sand was hard but very uneven so it was not a comfortable ride on the motorcycle. Besides that, there just wasn't much to see except for miles and miles of white sand. It didn't help that it was very hot and there was no way we were going to try any hiking. As it was we road to the end of the road and back to the visitor center. So we finished our visit in the first day and we decided not to stay around for another day but instead to head to Bryce.

It took two days of driving to get to Panguitch, UT which is where our hotel was and our central location to visit both Bryce and Zion. We expected to have to pay quite a bit for a hotel in the area but the Quality Inn where we stayed was the cheapest room of the trip. It was fairly old and could use some refurbishing but the rooms was clean and they actually serviced the room every day which they are not doing most places these day. When we arrived at Bryce, there were plenty of parking places but they were only supposed to be used for one hour although I'm sure a lot of folks ignored that request. Fortunately there was an overflow lot very close that had plenty of spaces. We parked and planned to spend the day using the shuttle service which ran buses about every 10 minutes so there was never a long wait. One of the things we wanted to do was hike in the hoodoos, specifically take the Queen's Garden/Navajo Loop trail. This is about a 2.9 mile loop trail that goes between Sunrise Point and Sunset Point. The hike was fine but it was very hot. I think it's listed as only 625 feet of elevation change but it seemed like way more than that coming back up from the amphitheater floor. After that we took the shuttle all the way to Bryce Point which is the high point of the park and then stopped again at Inspiration Point. The park was fairy crowded but it ever felt that way.

The next day we headed to Zion which was about a 60 mile ride. We came in from the East Ranger Station entrance and it was about a 12 mile ride in the park to the main visitor center. Unlike Bryce the visitor center parking lot was packed and people were driving around in circles waiting for someone to pull out. Fortunately we found a lot for motor homes and buses which also had spots dedicated for motorcycles. Again we planned to use the shuttle service since personal vehicles are not permitted on the roads in the park. After checking out the visitor center, we took a short 3/4 mile hike to the museum where they had the park video - we always like to view those whenever we go to a park. From there we took the shuttle back to the visitor center where we had some lunch. In the afternoon we took the shuttle to several stops where we got off and viewed the sites. Zion is much different than Bryce. In Bryce you are mostly above the sites looking down into the amphitheater where in Zion you are on the canyon floor looking up at all of the cliffs and canyon walls. We have always enjoyed both Bryce and Zion and have visited both numerous times. After visiting both parks it was time to head back home.

During most of the driving we used the Android Music Player to play the mp3 files we recorded from XM/Sirius. We also used either Waze or Google Maps to keep track of where we were going and get notice of accidents or construction on the roads ahead. We also got notice of speed traps but there were really not many of those and we ride very conservatively anyways. The only issue came when occasionally the music would stop playing and we had to restart it. It seemed to happed with either map application running and we never figured out what the cause was.

Like the last trip, occasionally the cruise control would not engage. I had originally thought that the cable might be damaged so I made a new cable. Unfortunately it still occasionally would not engage. In the end, it appears that the problem was with the rear brake foot pedal. There is a switch when you press the pedal that turns on the brake lights and kills the cruise control if it's engaged. When the cruise would not engage, I found that I could put my foot under the pedal and lift very slightly, the cruise could be engaged. I haven't investigated yet but there's probably a spring that returns the foot pedal to the rest position and the spring needs to be adjusted or maybe replaced. I'll have to put that on my to do list.

Unlike the cruise control, the problem with the GPS logger was definitely the cable. I installed a new connector on the cable from the logger to the control board and the logger was perfect the entire trip. I even made a few spare cables that I put in my spare parts kit.

Gas costs are coming down from the last trip and mileage was almost identical. At the same time, hotel costs were way down, while the average cost from  the last trip was over $200 per night, only one hotel was over $200 on this trip.

One of the new things I added for the last two trips was the whole trip elevation profile produced by GPS Visualizer. One of the interesting things was that, after the first two days, we basically spent the next 8 days at or above 4000'. I'll probably keep doing this for future trips.

Speaking of future trips, we really don't have anything planned yet but will definitely be thinking about it.

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