That top-32 National Park list I once created

I'm enjoying watching a few friends near the completion of their National Park quests. Earlier this year, while traveling through the three Florida National Parks, it was likewise enjoyable but also encouraging talking to fellow travelers pursuing their own such journeys: a father and son were hitting their 40th, and one woman was at her penultimate with plans to finish in September. That's all great stuff to me. 

These quests also lead to questions from interested observers.

"What's the first #NationalPark you'll be visiting when this is over?", "What's your favorite National Park?", "What are your top 3/5/10?" These are some of the questions I see posted and get asked. With 44/62 seen, I don't know if it's fair to assemble such a list, but here's how I ranked the top 32 I've visited. Yeah, if I redid it, many spots could flip, but the top 4 or so are pretty well locked in, until one of the 18 I'm missing changes my mind.

First I'll be visiting? Hopefully Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Great Sand Dunes.
Favorite? Glacier.
Top 32? Look closely at the picture. 😁🏞️
Can't wait to start planning again, but I'll continue to stay inside in the meantime.

That was the caption—sans the bulk of my usual hashtags—to this image for an Instagram post I did in April of 2020. 

The background image is a popular view from what is still my favorite park, and any crop marks you see are because, well, playing around with PPT was something I did at the time.

If you've pursued a travel quest, you've surely been asked what's your favorite this, your favorite that, or what's in your top three, five or ten, right? Picking my top 32 out of the 44 National Parks I had visited to that point wasn't as difficult as it might seem. 

However, with nine more (soon to be ten) of them visited since then, coming up with a top 32 now would be much more difficult. I mean, with trips to parks in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado and Florida these last four years, a few of my current 32 would likely slide off my .PPT slide.

Of course, when making my original list, and when thinking of favorites, I'm not thinking about which one is the "best"—that's far too subjective, as it's based on personal experience, and has too many variables that affect one's perception. For stretches during the pandemic, for example, many visitor centers were closed, and a good VC visit can greatly improve a park experience. Time of year, weather and crowds are other major factors that could impact a perception when rating it.

Still, if you look at the image, Glacier is still my favorite, but Glacier Bay would crack my top 5 if I revised this. And I'd have a tough time leaving the Everglades out of the top dozen. About Glacier, though, I did make five trips there between 1992 and 2005. Much has changed since those visits: fewer glaciers, bigger crowds, timed entries, and so forth. Would it still be my favorite? That's hard to say, but I'd sure like to think so. 

I can't say I'll never re-rank them, or create a new top 32, but I will wait until I have most of the remaining ones done. Then again, I finished my ballpark and football stadium quests without ranking them, so why would I do it with National Parks? We shall see.

My current 55, with Voyaguers to be marked red this month.

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As a side note, my questing brother Scott advised me that an NPS site I planned to visit a couple years later was "bottom 100" to him. I thought that a brilliant way to say something wasn't one of his favorites without putting it down. It led me to wonder about my bottom bunch. With 220ish of them seen now, there's no way I could fairly dismiss many of them. Still, I did jot down five that could be in my bottom dozen easily, but I'll never share that publicly. 😜

And as a final note, I'd be remiss in not noting this rare blog post was written as part of a double challenge with Krista, one of the friends I had in mind with the first sentence above. It was fun watching her great driving arc across the country for her summer break, where she picked up three new National Parks and has the same amount left to finish her journey. I can't wait to see that happen.