We're home. 4,700 miles, Yellowstone, the Tetons, and 17 people on the Snake River. Here's how it ended.

We pulled into Springfield yesterday afternoon.

4,700 miles. Two weeks. Montana, Minneapolis, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Snake River in Jackson Wyoming, and back home through country that reminded me why we live in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm exhausted in the way that only a long family road trip produces — the specific combination of too many hours in a car, too many gas station stops, too many "are we there yet" questions answered with varying levels of patience depending on which day of the trip it was.

And I'm glad to be home in the way you can only be glad to be home after you've been properly away. The dog is happy. The kids are quiet in the way kids get quiet after too much adventure. The Suburban is parked and not going anywhere for a while.

It was worth every mile.

Yellowstone first — Old Faithful, bison on the road, the kind of landscape that makes you feel genuinely small in the best possible way. My 4th grader got us an America the Beautiful pass for free through the Every Kid Outdoors program — a federal program that gives free annual national park passes to every 4th grader in America. We hit three parks on this leg alone. That pass would have cost $80 and saved us $105+ in entry fees. We paid exactly $0 for it. If you have a 4th grader and don't know about this program — go to everykidoutdoors.gov right now. Genuinely one of the best kept secrets in family travel.

Then the Grand Tetons. All 21 of us met at the Airbnb — a big house split between two families that turned what would have been a $500/night property into something manageable at $175/night for our share. Three nights with mountains that looked painted against the sky every single morning.

Then Jackson Wyoming. And the Snake River.

Seventeen of us went rafting. Two rafts, extended family, kids ranging from young to almost-grown. Me and my two youngest and my oldest son on the water. My oldest daughter made the extremely reasonable decision that she'd rather explore Jackson's shops than sit in a raft getting splashed — a choice I respect completely and also quietly envied by the end of the second set of rapids.

It was one of those days that doesn't need embellishment. Seventeen people on a river in Wyoming on a summer afternoon. That's enough. That's more than enough.

I budgeted $4,686 before we left. I haven't added up the final receipts yet — that's a job for this week now that we're home and the dust has settled. But here's what I know directionally:

Montana came in well under budget — family hospitality saved us roughly $1,300-1,500 in hotels and meals. Minneapolis same story. The Tetons Airbnb split saved us hundreds versus individual hotel rooms. The rafting was the biggest single discretionary expense of the trip — worth every dollar.

The final number will land somewhere close to the original budget or slightly under. Which means the budgeting exercise worked — not because it made the trip cheaper, but because it meant we never once stressed about money on the road. We knew the number going in. We spent accordingly. Every gas station stop and restaurant meal happened without financial anxiety in the background.

That's the whole point of budgeting a vacation. Not restriction. Permission.

Here's what this trip actually taught me about family travel costs:

If you took any kind of trip this summer — road trip, weekend away, anything — sit down this week and add up what you actually spent. Not to judge it. Just to know the number. The gap between what you budgeted and what you spent is the most useful data point for next year's trip. Write it down before the receipts disappear.

My oldest son graduated six weeks ago. He's figuring out what comes next — trade school, firefighting, military, a few college classes. He was in the raft on the Snake River with me and his two younger siblings, paddling through rapids in Wyoming on a Wednesday afternoon in July.

That felt right. That felt like exactly where he should be right now — still in the family raft, literally and otherwise. Still on the trip. Still here.

His 16 year old sister made the completely reasonable call to spend the afternoon shopping in Jackson with her mom, grandma, and aunt instead of getting soaked on a river. I respect that decision. The shopping crew probably had a better time than they'd admit.

The Tetons Airbnb was the whole family — my two brother-in-laws and their families, my sister-in-law and her family, my mother and father-in-law. A big house full of people who love each other, in one of the most beautiful places on earth, for three nights. The kids ran between rooms. The adults sat outside and watched the mountains. Nobody looked at their phone much.

That's the kind of thing you can't buy specifically. You can only build it — slowly, over years of showing up for each other — and then one summer you find yourself in a house in the Tetons with the people you love most and you realize the building was worth it.

We stopped at my dad's gravesite in Lewistown Montana on the way through. We rode quads on the ranch where he grew up. We sat on my mom's porch at Flathead Lake. We floated the Snake River with family on a Wednesday afternoon in July.

I came home exhausted and glad to be home and already a little sad that it's over.

That's the right way to feel at the end of something that mattered.

The dog is happy. The Suburban is parked. The kids are quiet.

It was worth every mile.

Back to school spending — most families overspend by $400-600 every August on things their kids don't actually need. We'll break down exactly what's worth buying, what to wait on, and the one purchase almost every parent makes too early every single year. August is here. This one is perfectly timed.