National Park Travels

The Background:

I have always enjoyed the outdoors, history, and the vast National Park system in the United States. Most family vacations incorporated at least a few visits to parks, often ones I had visited before. During a three-week family vacation in 2006, though, we stopped at 10 park units in the western states. After that trip, I realized that I wanted to visit every official unit of that system.

I finally retired in July, 2021, with the intent on starting to live that dream. I had already visited over 60 units throughout my life, some multiple times. But what would it take to see them all?

There are 425 official units managed by the National Park Service (as of July 2021). The Park Service manages several additional areas which, for some reason, are not considered part of the "official" units. Along the way, there are lots of other places to see (state, local, etc.).

Looking over a map of the park system, I wondered if I could actually visit all 425 park units before I retired permanently? Well, the answer is "no" because at least one of the units is currently not open to the public. In addition, another unit is in Guam and a few units are in northern Alaska. Those sites are "possible", but are on the "we will wait and see" list for now.

The Plan:

To visit 425 National Park Service sites in a reasonable time period, I clearly needed a plan. My first step was to simply get a visual image of where they were all located. I discovered a website for the National Park Traveller's Club", a group of people with similar ideas of visiting as many park sites as possible. For a very small membership cost, I had access to a massive database of information assembled by their membership over the years, including the approximate latitude and longitude of every unit. With this information in hand, I wrote a few VBA scripts to create a Google Earth KML file.

From there, I started collecting the sites into managable groups of roughly 12-15 sites each. These groups would represent one trip lasting about two weeks. My goal was to take a trip roughly every 8 - 10 weeks, hoping to take 5-6 per year.

For greater details on my reasons, hopes, and plans, along with comments about each trip and each park, please take a look at my Blog.

What is on this site?

This website has information on trips I've taken, trips I hope to take, information about parks in those trips, and other general information and thoughts. There are often multiple paths into the same information. Each path is explained below.

The "Groups / Trips" link in the side menu will list all groups I currently have organized, along with a short description of group. It also will list all trips that have already been taken, including the dates of the trip and a brief comment about it. Clicking on a Group or Trip in the lists will show all of the parks in that Group/Trip. Choosing a park will open a detailed park page, showing details, photos and comments (if visited).
The "Parks" link in the side menu will allow you to choose a specific park. This will bring up the same park page as above, but simply skips the Group step. Parks may also be directly accessed by choosing a Region from the side menu. A list of states in the region will pop out, and after choosing a state, a list of parks in that state will pop out. Choose your park!
The "Travel Blog" link in the side menu will open my blog. The blog allows me to quickly enter thoughts and comments about park visits, along with other comments and explanations, in far greater detail and quicker than I can do on the website proper. I encourage you to browse through the entries as some explain background information. The blog also allows you to add comments and feedback.
The "Sites Visited" link will simply list in chronological order every trip taken to date, and in a separate list, show every blog entry to date. Within the blog software, only the last few entries show in a list unless a specific month or category is chosen. This list makes it easier (I hope) to see all entries and find specific ones.
Finally, the "General Info" link is simply a page with more information on numerous topics, such as what is a Passport Region vs an NPS Region. View it as somewhat like an FAQ.

See the park locations in Google Earth:

The three links below will generate up-to-the-moment Google Earth KML files and prompt you to download them. These files, when opened in Google Earth, will show the location of every park unit. Clicking on a site within Google Earth Pro will open a window with photos and some information about that unit.

Create a KML file, color-coded by Visit Group showing full park name
Create a KML file, color-coded by Visit Group showing NPS 4-letter park codes
Create a KML file, color-coded by NPS Passport Regions
Create a KML file with no labels, just icon markers

I also maintain a Blog about my trips.

My Goal:

The Background:

The Plan:

What is on this site?

See the park locations in Google Earth:

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