My journey to visit all 59 National Parks in the U.S.
Follow me on my journey to visit all 59 of the U.S. National Parks — From Acadia to Zion! I started this journey back in 2002 and plan to finish in this Summer. So far I’ve been to 55 of the 59 and only have 4 remaining in Alaska. Each park is different, and exploring each park is a unique adventure. Some parks are easy, some are difficult. All are worth the effort!
I’m adding a new park every week. This week is Olympic National Park, in Washington.
So far, I have been to 55 of the 59 National Parks, and plan to have visited all of them by August of 2017. I will be adding a page here for at least one new park per week until I have a page for each one. For each park, I share my favorite pictures, experiences and stories.
I started visiting the U.S. National Parks during the summer of 2002, when I was spending the summer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had never loved the outdoors, and was a obese guy who spent my time behind a computer screen. I fell in love with these places, and after visiting a few, decided to set a goal to visit all of them–not really knowing what all that was to involve.
The first few that I visited, out in the Desert Southwest really just involved driving around from one overlook to the next, taking pics of whatever feature you could see from the road. A few required hiking for a couple of miles, and the occasional couple required hiking a few miles. I survived–usually spurred on by friends. Over time, I got in better shape, lost a lot of weight, and really began to enjoy the adventurous aspects of visiting these amazing places.
One of the biggest turning points came with my visit to Isle Royale. In order to visit this park, I had to learn to hike/camp with a backpack, otherwise, I wouldn’t get to see what that park had to offer. After this, I went back to a lot of parks that I didn’t do a good job of visiting the first time, usually including more hiking and spending more time that I had done on my first visit.
The culmination of this is coming this Summer of 2017, when I will be visiting the two most difficult parks up in Alaska, and will have to backpack for 9 days to visit Gates of the Arctic.
Visiting these places has helped me get into better shape, increased my interest in geology/science and enhanced my appreciation of history and what this country has to offer. I can attest to the transformative experience that spending time with nature can provide.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this site. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at:
alex@59adventures.com
Or you can contact me though the Facebook or Twitter pages listed below.