On April 28 2022, I set out from North Carolina on an epic road trip to visit nineteen national parks. Over the next seven weeks I would travel 12,500 miles through eighteen states. The trip really began six months earlier, when I decided in October of 2021 that I wanted to undertake the monumental task of putting this adventure together.
It all started as a map on my wall with stickers marking every national park in the contiguous United States. My process of elimination first removed anything east of the Mississippi, then the far-flung parks that wouldn’t easily fit into an itinerary, like Voyageurs, Big Bend, and Carlsbad Caverns. A route finally emerged and then it was on to planning campsites, cooking logistics, gear, and must-do hikes.
By March I had a fully-planned daily itinerary, a hitch with a storage rack on the back of my car, and a binder full of reservations and road maps. One month later I hit the road.
This is the story of the trip of a lifetime.
- Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP
- Arches NP
- Canyonlands NP
- Capitol Reef NP
- Bryce Canyon NP
- Grand Canyon NP
- Joshua Tree NP
- Yosemite NP
- Kings Canyon NP
- Sequoia NP
- Redwood NP
- Crater Lake NP
- Olympic NP
- North Cascades NP
- Mount Rainier NP
- Yellowstone NP
- Grand Teton NP
- Rocky Mountain NP
- The Beginning
In October of 2021, two months into my first year of graduate school in North Carolina, I made a decision. I was finally, finally, going to road trip to the west coast. It was the type of trip I’d been wanting to do for years, and for the first time I was in a position to… Read more: The Beginning
19Parks 