We've been on a National Parks kick recently as we've been going back through Ken Burns' powerful "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" series.  Which is why a certain feature in the latest Sierra Club magazine, Sierra, happened to catch our eye.  It was called "Sizing Them Up" and it was a series of eye-opening figures about different aspects of our nation's National Parks.  Sure - everyone knows that the National Parks contain the highest peaks (Denali), tallest trees (Redwoods) and clearest waters (Crater Lake) but these are numbers you don't often think about.

11,478: Acres of campgrounds in all the parks, enough to fill 8,700 football fields.

16,461,143: Linear feet of hiking trails in the park system.  If you walked every foot of every trail at an average speed of three mph, for eight hours a day, it would take one year and eight months.

784: Metric tons of greenhouse gases avoided by the generation of renewable energy in parks - equivalent to the carbon sequested by 20,103 tree seedlings grown for ten years.

2 billion: Gallons of water consumed in the park system each year - enough to fill the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool nearly 300 times.

274,852,949: The number of visits to parks in 2008, nearly one of every man, woman, and child in the country.

5.1 million: Number of hours donated by volunteers in a year - equivalent to 2,400 full-time employees or 10% of the park workforce.

9,550:  Miles of paved and unpaved roads, enough to cross the United States three times.

22.3 million: The number of park brochures printed annually when folded flat adn stacked, enough to reach 11.6 miles into the sky.

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