After a few days in American Samoa it was off to the Island of Maui and a visit to Haleakala National Park. Click on the link to view our pictures and read our journal. Thanks for travelling along with us on this incredible journey.

Our adventures on this trip are off to a great start with our journey to American Samoa National Park. Follow the link to read and see our pictures. Our updates for Haleakala and Volcano will be coming soon.

Well our quest for 61 parks did not last long. Last week Whites Sands in New Mexico officially became our 62nd National Park. Who knows how many parks there will be when we are chasing our last one. This is the third park added in the past 20 months.

Our Plans for January are to visit 3 more parks. Elizabeth has a job in Kona, Hawaii, so her travel expenses are covered to get there and back. I will join her at the end of her program. (My flight, nonstop Phoenix to Kona was only $402 round trip.) We will fly to American Samoa, then to Maui (Haleakala), then back to the Big Island (Volcano) before returning to Phoenix.

We are getting this journey off to a quick start, getting 7 parks in just over a month. This includes going from the eastern most park to the western (and southern) most park. Virgin Islands and American Samoa are 7,500 miles apart, by far, the greatest distance between any two parks. Biscayne and Everglades are less then 20 miles apart.

Our Florida swing concluded with a trip to the US Virgin Islands to visit the easternmost Park in the system. We had great weather and thoroughly enjoyed our few days in the Caribbean. Click on the link above to read about our adventures and see our pictures.

We visited the Everglades National Park on December 18th, 2019. This was our third park in 3 days. What a great swing through southern Florida. I loved all the animals here. I finally got to try out my new camera on some critters. The main reason I purchased it was for the animals of the National Parks. That and the scenery of the western parks.

After a very productive 10 days helping my (Gary) stepmother in Edgewater, Florida, we drove to Orlando, then flew to Key West. On Monday December 16, 2019 we visited Park #2 – Dry Tortugas. On Tuesday we drove up through the keys to visit Park #3 – Biscayne. Click on these links to see our pictures and a description of our visits. There is more to come as I just need to get this site updated for our visit to Everglades and Virgin Islands.

We are starting this blog in November 2019 as a way to document our journey as we visit all of the 61 US National Parks. We will include links to many of our previous and future adventures as well. This website is mostly for family and friends, but also as a way to have documentation for ourselves.

Last month, my wife Elizabeth and I (Gary) were looking for a quick getaway. We ended up flying to Denver, CO and driving the 75 miles to Estes Park, to experience Rocky Mountain National Park. This was actually the 13^th park I personally had visited, but during this visit Elizabeth said we should start over and visit all the parks over the next 20 years or so.  My reply was, that it is a great idea, but I want to do it before I turn 65 in 4 ½ years. So the seed was planted, a goal with a timeline. On day 2 of our visit to RMNP we stopped at the visitor center and purchased a passport book and got our first official National Park stamp.

We have always had a bit of an adventurous spirit. I worked construction out of college. When Elizabeth and I first became a team in the mid-1980’s we lived in 9 different locations the first 5 years we were together. It was during that stretch we got married. Kids soon followed, after which the moving slowed a bit. After 8 years in Vermont I again was looking for something new, so I resigned my position with the only company I had worked for out of college. They responded by offering me a new position in Arizona, so off we went. Our moms were not too happy with us moving two of their grandkids across the country.

That was 20 years ago. Now the kids are grown, we have no dogs and no grandkids, so why not start a new big adventure. We are both self-employed, with flexible work schedules, are healthy, and have saved and invested well, so now is the time to travel!

Some of our previous adventures include: I through hiked the Appalachian trail in 2014. Elizabeth loves the hiker community and the towns the trail goes through, but is not keen on hiking up big hills with a heavy pack and sleeping in the woods. Sooo, 2015 we traveled to Spain and walked the Camino Frances, 500 miles across Spain. We both loved it. In 2016 we returned to Spain for another Camino. In 2018 I started a second through hike of the AT. After 1,000 miles I returned home, purchased a bicycle, flew to the Canadian border and pedaled 1,000 miles south along the Pacific Coast to Monterrey, CA. 2019 brought us a third trip to Spain and we had another awesome 550 mile walk on the Camino Frances. I then flew to Ohio and pedaled my bike 1,000 miles along the Great Lakes in Canada, ending up in Maine.