B and J visit all of America's National Parks
Parks visited to date
| Canyon De Chelly | June 2003 | While not technically a National Park, this is where it started to get serious. |
| Redwoods | July 30th, 2006 | Early days yet, notably we haven't got a picture of us with the Park sign. We'll fix this in future because Redwoods is a place you return to. |
| Crater Lake | July 31st, 2006 | Another one of the NorthWest's fascinating parks. If you're interested in the intersection of geology and anthropology, the explosion that created this caldera lives on in the oral tradition of the Klamath Native American peoples of this area. |
| Mount St Helens | August 1st, 2006 | Not a National Park, obvs, but immensely interesting and if you didn't visit it while en route from Crater Lake to Rainer, you would have missed a chance to experience (even now) the nearly-incomprehensible power of that cataclysm |
| Mount Rainier | August 2nd, 2006 | The entrance gate to Rainier is where we started taking pictures of the park entrances as a kind of "we were there" record. |
| Olympic | August 4th, 2006 | A vast, wonderful space where the animals and plants have space to live |
| Rocky Mountain | May 20th, 2007 | While I was in Boulder on a business trip, we managed to tack on a couple of extra days and knocked off RMNP. Late season snow kept us off many trails, but we did a good job of BOTG |
| Glacier Bay | July 10th, 2009 | As part of an early 50th wedding anniversary celebration, we visited Alaska with B's parents, travelling up the inside passage from Vancouver to Seward via Glacier Bay. To be true purists, we probably should have kayaked up to the glacier face and touched the actual ice of each glacier. Watching from the safety of the cruise ship deck suited me just fine. When those columns of ice collapse, the wave is enough to swamp little boats. You can read my travel notes from that trip. |
| Denali | July 14th, 2009 | A fairly "soft" engagement with the vastness of our first on-the-ground Alaskan Park, and a taster of what surely will be some rugged adventures in the future. We did a bus tour, with a lecture stop and an additional one mile loop from the visitor's center, in order to make at least a token effort of BOTG |
| Kenai Fjords | July 16th, 2009 | While cooling our heels in Anchorage, we decided to make use of our rental car and hoof it back to Kenai, which is not that far from Anchorage, and it would be another park bagged. Kenai is another of those vast Alaskan parks that are mostly inaccessible unless you've done some serious trip planning. We drove in, walked around on the glacier at the visitor center and then drive back to Anchorage. It was during this trip that we decided that one should not "bag" a park by driving in through the front door, buying a backpack patch from the visitor center and then driving out again. One needs to respect the spirit of the place and immerse oneself in the essence of the park. We came up with the "how to visit the parks" guidelines to inform our visits. Out of respect for the places, we do our best to cover a representative portion of the park's different areas and ecosystems. |
| Biscayne Bay | February 9th, 2010 | When B suggested we try to see the last night launch of the Space Shuttle, we decided to make it part of a National Parks Trip. After a very exciting (?) time trying to see the shuttle, we took a day trip over to Boca Chita. BB is mostly water, unsurprisingly, so there aren't trails per se. Instead we took a Parks Service boat trip over to Boca Chita with a Ranger on interpretation duty. This was my first real interaction with the weird Floridian Karst geology that is both its attraction and its undoing. |
| Dry Tortugas | February 11th, 2010 | Worthy of entire chapters in travel guides, DT is a gem and one of my personal favourites. The two-hour, fifty-dollar ferry ride is the only obstacle. |
| Everglades | February 13th, 2010 | We're still not very consistently taking pictures of the park entrance signs. Everglades, as everyone knows, has incredible wildlife, most especially birds. |
| Big Cypress | February 14th, 2010 | Yes, I know, Not An Actual National Park. Included here as an Extremely Honourable Mention. The sheer diversity and density of wildlife make this State Park worth seeing. The Tamiami Trail, too, is something exceptional. Leaving aside the stupidity of the damming of the waters that the road caused, the road is worth driving (slowly) in order to appreciate the spoonbills perched in the trees alongside the drainage channels. |
| Saguenay | August 23rd, 2010 | Yes, I know. NAANP. Also, not USA, yes, yes. However it is a Canadian National Marine Conservation Area and fits with the spirit of VATNPP, if not the letter. Other countries have perfectly good National Parks of their own, and where and when we visit them, they deserve to be included. Technically, Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park. This place is special, and we had a special experience while paddling there. I'll write up a trip report some time. (short version: beluga whales swam under our kayaks) |
| Congaree | March 13th, 2011 | This is really where we started to focus on getting our picture at the entrance to the park. |
| Great Smoky Mountains | March 13th, 2011 | There's a lot going on in GSM and it's quite spread out with harder-to-get-to areas, notably Smokemont and Cataloochee. |
| Shenandoah | March 18th, 2011 | Surprisingly good. Seeing as Shenandoah is basically Skyline Drive, you're limited to either walking from the ridgeline down, with the return being uphill, or starting from the valley floor, climbing up to the road, then you have a downhill leg on the way home. We started from Crozet, home of Whitehall Vineyards and one of the best Tourigas I've ever tasted. |
| Joshua Tree | October 29th, 2012 | An Epic road trip in which we visit Eight Parks (one is a repeat) |
| Death Valley | October 31st, 2012 | J celebrates a National Parks Birthday. What could possibly be better? |
| Sequoia | November 2nd, 2012 | I'm not in crisis, but I'm close |
| Kings Canyon | November 3rd, 2012 | Not a complete visit, we will have to return to do it justice. |
| Yosemite | November 5th, 2012 | One of the keystone parks. Lives up to the billing. Would love to return when money allows us to stay in Tenaya Lodge. |
| Lassen Volcanic | November 7th, 2012 | Just a couple of days too late (as with Kings Canyon) and we have to satisfy ourselves with a "self-guided" walk for a couple of miles on the road from the visitor's center. We did see smoking sulphurous fumaroles. |
| Redwoods | November 8th, 2012 | A return trip, and every bit as impressive as it was the first time. |
| Cuyahoga | June 6th, 2014 | An opportunity presented itself, and we took it. A very nice place, but otherwise more of a state park than national park, scenery wise. Yes, I know _why_ it's a National Park, but for sheer unbridled impressiveness, this one is more pedestrian. |
| Great Sand Dunes | August 24th, 2014 | As part of an Epic Road Trip, we started off with GSD. Eight miles of up-then-down shocked our lazy legs into shape. |
| Black Canyon Of The Gunnison | August 25th, 2014 | One of the most awesomely named, and certainly one of the most enigmatic. |
| Mesa Verde | August 26th, 2014 | Another personal favourite. The combination of anthropological significance and climatological/geological factors made this place specially interesting. Bonus points for the stupendous lodge architecture. |
| Canyonlands, Needles District | August 28th, 2014 | Speaking of enigmatic, Canyonlands' three districts make this park one of the most difficult to claim. Can you honestly say you've been to Canyonlands if you haven't gone at least a couple of dozen miles into the Maze? Needles' hikes are off the charts good, and with the one of the most impressive approach roads I've ever seen. From Newspaper Rock, the road into Canyonlands is lined with monster red cliffs on either side (Kayenta or Navajo formations, perhaps?). Why the BLM area on this road is not at least a State Park is mystery. The scenery is almost better than in Needles itself. |
| Arches | August 28th, 2014 | Utah has an unfair share of the good parks, that's for sure. While Delicate Arch at sunrise is good, don't short-change yourself. Do the walks. Lots of great trails here, although it can be busy. |
| Canyonlands, Island In The Sky District | August 30th, 2018 | While Island in the Sky in general is nice, the real gem in the crown is Upheaval Dome, a mind-blowing formation that bends your perceptions as you look down into it from the rim. |
| Capitol Reef | September 1st, 2014 | Capitol Reef rekindled my enthusaism for geology and I bought a weighty Geology textbook from the guide shop to help me understand what was going on. B and I trotted around, doing some very good trails, all the while asking ourselves -- Kayenta? Wingate? Navajo? (The three of which make up the Glen Canyon Group) |
| Zion | September 4th, 2014 | An exceptional park. One of the jewels in the NPS crown, for sure, and justifiably, one of the most popular. With popularity comes the attendant difficulties -- overcrowding and degradation of the landscape. Fortunate were we, that bighorn sheep we saw. |
| Bryce | September 5th, 2014 | Hoodoo? Yoodoo. Worth second look. Saw my first pronghorn here. We'll probably see Bryce and Zion again soon, as we re-visit GSENM, for we will surely re-visit. |
| Coiba (Panama) | January 16th, 2018 | Epically difficult to get to and worth the trip when you get there. An experience I won't forget in a hurry! Coiba is a Panamanian National Park. |
| Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument | May 24th, 2018 | Yes, yes, NAANP, I know. However, GSENM verges on NP status, and barring misjudgement by the government (YKWIM), this incredible landscape will acquire the protected status it needs and deserves. During the 2014 Utah/Colorado trip, we drove through the town of Boulder UT on our way back to Vegas from Capitol Reef. Route 12 passes through Grand Staircase [Escalante National Monument] and with it, one of the wackiest, wildest two-lane roads I've been on for a while, with the possible exception of Millionaire's highway, which is a story in and of itself. |
| Great Basin | May 26th, 2018 | A hidden gem. You drive America's Loneliest Highway to get there and once there, the town of Baker (at first glance) appears not to be up to the task of home base for explorations. Do not let first impressions fool you. Some of the best restaurants anywhere are here, in the modest town of Baker. Kerouac's is run by NYC refugees and the superbly authentic rooms attached to the restaurant are just so perfectly rustic that you feel almost as righteous as though you were camping, without the cold showers. There is just the right ratio of frontier-rough-blanket-dusty-trails and cocktails-to-kill-for. We were immediately and thoroughly charmed. +1 Will Return. Oh, BTW, Best Bartender Ever. Shout out to the bartenders there. Read the Trip Report |