The first time I wrote about re-capping a trip I called it a post-mortem. Apparently that seemed a little to weird so I changed it to a re-cap. You could also call it trip analysis. What can go into a trip re-cap report? That depends on each traveler and what they want to gain out of the re-cap. I like to keep track of how much each trip costs us along with how many miles we traveled and how many pictures we took. I also try to record things that I can improve for the next trip to make it better as well as what worked well if there was something I tried differently.
One of the things that I learned from our last trip was to pay closer attention to hotel location as compared to whatever sights we are planning on seeing. Our destination was Biscayne National Park and Everglades National Park. Our hotel ending up being closer to the Miami International Airport which was at least 45 minutes from either of these parks. That cost us at least 1 ½ hours that we could have used to explore the park further. This time we learned that a flashlight is a good idea to have along (see An Evening Adventure at Acadia). Also, packing a soft sided cooler is helpful when exploring a National Park. This can be used to keep water or food cold. On a earlier adventure we figured out that buying a case of water early in the trip was useful and economical. Another thing learned at Acadia was that getting a meal ahead of time and bringing it with opens up some flexibility. There are a number of National Parks without options for eating and if you intend to spend more time than a few hours at theses parks than being able to stop at your leisure and grab something to eat allows for a longer adventure. In addition, most of the time what better place to have a picnic than in the presence of the scenery and sounds of a National Park.
Some of the other data that I collected:
Miles covered in an airplane: 2,248
Miles driven: 1,639
Miles walked: 13
All of these miles were covered in 8 days. We slept well during the night in order to have the energy to explore the next day. The 8th day was strictly a van ride to the airport so no miles driven or walked so taking the miles driven or walked divided by 7 gives us 236 miles traveled in a day. No, our goal is not to go as many miles as possible in a day. The goal is to experience as much as we can while the opportunity to do is present. Also, we took 587 pictures.
This reminds me. I didn’t even calculate the miles on the bikes.
