He Knew He Was Right

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 ...

From August 4, 2013 through the start of this MLB season, it felt good knowing that I had seen all 30 teams play in their current home ballpark. I've watched the home team play in a total of 43 ballparks, in fact. The Braves opening their new stadium this year of course knocked me out of that all-30 club. Surprisingly to me, though, I didn't feel an overwhelming urge to visit the new ballpark as soon as the season got underway. I was perfectly content to wait until the NFL schedule release later in April to see if I might in one weekend couple a visit to SunTrust park with one to Mercedez-Benz stadium to catch the Falcons in their new digs. A few weeks later, the scheduling gods did set up the alignment I sought, but I balked when realizing the football half of the setup was a Sunday night game in their new stadium's debut. While that'd be nice to see, chances are it's going to be more expensive than I'd like. So, I still haven't made plans to see the B...

In retrospect, using old model train layout paste may not have been the best way to mount my National​ Parks visited map. Thankfully I'm now at 121 sites (with 30+ visited during this "nps100" campaign), so I have more than enough pins to firmly hold the map in place... With 2016 and the NPS's centennial drawing to closes, I can certainly look back and smile on what I've seen this year, and look forward to seeing many more park sites in the coming years. Still, it's somewhat dejecting knowing that I won't add any more pins until the spring, unless a ski strip has me pass Boston or business calls me to DC, in which case I may be able to tack a few more spots sooner than later. For now, though, I can start focusing on adding pins to my ski map. 😀 For the map here, I've used three pin colors: Red pins = National Park sites (33 of 59); black pins = Civil War sites (16); yellow pins = all others in the #NPS system. And, here's the list a...

Today marks the centennial of the National Park Service, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I've looked forward to this day all year. As a rather big fan of the NPS, I've visited about 20 new sites this year, some big and many smaller ones. I learned or greatly enjoyed something at every single location. Since I have posted a few other lists here, I thought it might be interesting to do the same for the parks I've visited to date: Alphabetically by state, here goes... Denali NP AK Kenai Fjords NP AK Fort Smith NHS AR Hot Springs NP AR Pea Ridge NMP AR Grand Canyon NP AZ Lake Mead NRA AZ Petrified Forest NP AZ Death Valley NP CA Golden Gate NRA CA Lassen Volcanic NP CA Lava Beds NM CA Redwood Forest NP CA San Francisco Maritime NHP CA Whiskeytown NRP CA Yosemite NP CA Colorado NM CO Mesa Verde NP CO Roc...

So, when I visited Hot Springs National Park on my last trip, it kind of rekindled a somewhat dormant desire to see National Parks. Ballparks and football stadiums have been the focal points of my non-ski travel quests lately. When I stitched together this recent trip to some southern ballparks, however, and looked for things to do around Little Rock, Hot Springs jumped out at me. After stopping there (and, yeah, acquiring that Passports to Your National Parks ), I imagined my next couple of vacations with what NPs I might visit as a main focus of them. Bold shows what I've seen to date: Acadia, Maine American Samoa, American Samoa Arches, Utah Badlands, South Dakota Big Bend, Texas Biscayne, Florida Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado Bryce Canyon, Utah Canyonlands, Utah Capitol Reef, Utah Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico Channel Islands, California Congaree, South Carolina Crater Lake, Oregon Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio Death Valley, California  Denali, Alaska Dry...

I first saw it in one of the U.S. National Parks of the Rockies--Glacier, I think, but certainly by the time I reached Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons. It was there that I noticed a few hikers gathered around a National Parks Passport cancellation station. It was 1992, and I was really just getting started with my National Parks obsession. To that point, my visits to any of the places in the National Park System were limited: I had been to Gettysburg and Cape Hatteras when I was younger, I had driven to Mount Rushmore and the Badlands the year before, I toured Civil War battlefields early in 1992 and my Dad and I drove to Acadia earlier in August. That two-week gem, which started in the last week of the month, was my first National Parks focused trip and one of my all-time favorite travel adventures. I drove a large loop that led me first to Rocky Mountain National Park and then north to Little Bighorn Battlefield, before kicking into high gear with stops from Glacier National Park d...

Announcing the North American National Parks Project! I love and loathe lists/goals like this. They put good and vile ideas in my head. After all, I have this thing about completing them. So far, I have completed travel tasks such as seeing all 50 states, touching all five Great Lakes, seeing all 30 MLB teams play a home game, and then seeing all current MLB ballparks. I'm also well underway to doing the same for NFL stadiums. Next, I already have an idea about trying to see a sporting event in all 50 states; I'm at 27 at the moment. I'm not really committed to that last one, but there are about a half dozen states--those which I've only previously driven through, e.g.--where I am planning on spending a bit more travel time. Anyway, travel king Everything Everywhere wants to see all of the National Parks. I've seen a bunch. He posted this list, which I trust is accurate, and I've made bold those I've visited: Acadia, Maine American Samoa, American Sa...