about me

Lose some weight, get more exercise, watch less TV and read more books are common New Years Resolutions. I have been guilty of some of these in the past. Not this year. In 2023, I was 52 and recently divorced. I wanted to focus on things that make me happy. Hiking is one of those things that I have always enjoyed. My goal was going to be to visit and hike in all of the National Parks. I had visited all of the states and a few territories by 2015 as my job requires a decent amount of travel. It seems like a daunting task but, if broken up into smaller chunks, I might make it in a few years. I do not have a corporate sponsor paying for my travel costs. I have a full time job and normal bills like a mortgage that needs paid monthly. This adventure is not something that I can just take a year off of work and do for fun. I also need to do these parks fairly cheaply, something not easy as they are spread far and wide including in two territories and others only accessible by private planes or boat. At the end of each park entry, I will add the total that the trip cost me. I am not including meals as I have to eat anyway and it should not be considered an extra cost.
The other factor is that I am doing this entire quest by myself. My kids are young adults and cannot take time out of their work and school schedules to travel with me. We already had trips planned for Italy and Australia and those took a great deal of planning to fit into everyone’s calendars. Hiking solo is not always the best idea especially when over 50 and in areas where you are not familiar with the trails. I joined a couple online travel and hiking groups but did not find any likely candidates to join me. There were plenty of catfish that think someone who travels a lot is rich and ripe for the plucking! Boy are they wrong.
Ruling out the parks that I have already been to, it leaves 55 of the 63 National parks. I am concentrating on the ones that are legacy nature Parks and not including Historic parks, Battlefields, Grasslands, Monuments and State parks. If I included all of the properties run by the National Park service it would include 424 sites plus about 10 more run by Bureau of Land Management. Not that I will not visit these if they are in the area but for an initial goal, the National Parks are the concentration. Why some sites are monuments and others are parks is beyond my understanding. The Gateway Arch seems like a classic monument, but it is a Nature Park while Craters of the Moon is a Monument. Not that I will skip these places if they are in the area, but the National Parks are the main focus.
If time permits, I will revisit the parks that I have been to in the past. In chronological order these are: Crater Lake, Hawaii Volcanoes, Denali, Wrangell-St. Elias, Olympic, Redwood, Yellowstone and Zion. Surprising that I have been to Wrangell-St. Elias (one of the least visited parks) and not Great Smokey Mountains (most visited). The planning process started in February. I got a map of the parks and compared it to my already booked work schedule for most of the year. There were at least 6 parks that I could fit in without much additional effort or cost. Free rental cars days and hotel points that I have been stocking up on for years are finally paying off. If I spent an extra day after I completed my work, several of these parks were within driving distance. Some of the others were going to take extreme planning and special dedicated trips that I better start saving money for. I ordered my America the Beautiful annual pass in March figuring it would pay for itself by the fourth park I visited.