59 Parks

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Geo: 34.7365, -82.7967

About eleven years ago Anne and I decided, after our visit to Hawaii's big island, that it would be a neat thing to try to hike in all of the US National Parks. We had visited Hawaii mainly because we wanted to see where our son had spent a year working as the computer teacher & guru for a private school on the big island. While there, we hiked in the Volcanoes National Park as well as a few other places on both the big island and Oahu. I had visited Yosemite a year earlier by myself and lamented the fact that I had no one to share the experience with. It just isn't the same when you say “WOW look at that” and there is no one to hear you say it. Over the years since, we have both had some pretty spectacular WOW moments. And I can honestly say that there is no one I would rather have shared those moments with than my remarkable wife. When we started our quest, neither of us really believed we would actually hike in all of the parks; after all, there were 57 of them and some were in really remote areas. Along the way, two more parks were added for the current total of 59. Several, like American Samoa and some of the remote Alaska parks, we were pretty sure we'd never be able to get to. But we did.

On many of our trips in the last few years, when we would meet folks on our travels and tell them of our goal and the number of parks we'd visited, the inevitable question was “which one did you like best?” or”what's your favorite so far?”. Well, now that we've done them all, I still can't pick a single number one favorite. All have some unique quality or they wouldn't be national parks. For what its worth, here are a few of my favorites.


As a general response to these questions, we usually say that our favorite area is southern Utah with Zion, Capital Reef, Canyon lands, and Bryce Canyon National Parks. Arches is also in southern Utah but, while beautiful and unique, was really too touristy and crowded to be counted as one of our favorites.

The most exotic park was probably the one in American Samoa. Certainly, it was the one farthest from home and one of the ones with a very unique culture.

The parks with the best single hikes, at least in my opinion, were Lake Clark in Alaska and Yosemite in California. The hike up Tanalian Mt in Lake Clark was a 10 mile round trip with an elevation gain of 3,700 feet and the day we did it, we hiked through and then above the cloud layer until we reached the top when the clouds broke up to reveal breathtaking views in all directions. In Yosemite, we hiked the Clouds Rest trail, a 14.5 mile round trip with an elevation gain of about 1,800 feet. Both of these hikes were very strenuous but extremely rewarding.
Probably the most enjoyable visit to a park was our trip to the US Virgin Islands. This was in large part due to the fact that we had our whole family with us, including our one and only granddaughter Maggie. The tasty island rum 'pain killer' drinks may also have had something to do with it as well!.
Parks with the most wildlife were probably Denali and Katmai in Alaska. In Denali, we saw a couple of bears (from a long distance), several Dall sheep (up close while hiking), caribou, and wolves. In Katmai, we saw more bears than we could count (again up close), not to mention all the salmon they were catching.
On this, our final trip to bag the last three parks, we made our third trip to Alaska and visited Glacier Bay, Kobuk Valley, and Gates of the Arctic National Parks. With the exception of our trip to American Samoa, it was, without a doubt, the trip we spent the most time in the air, just a little under 24 total hours. We flew on 17 different flights on 12 different airplanes--seventeen separate takeoffs and (thankfully) seventeen separate landings. Over eight thousand total air miles.

Glacier Bay was not terribly hard to get to since Alaska Air flew into the small village of Gustavus adjacent to the park, but the other two were pretty remote and the main reason we saved them for last. To visit Kobuk and Gates, neither of which can be reached by road, we had to fly on a small plane from Fairbanks to the very small village of Bettles and fly from there on an even smaller float plane into each park for a brief hour or two of short hiking.

The major attraction in Glacier Bay NP was the bay itself. We took the day-long boat tour into the bay for a relatively close up look at several glaciers, a couple of which were tidal glaciers that 'calved' huge chunks of ice into the bay. Though we did not get to see an actual calving, we saw plenty of ice floating in the bay at the foot of the glacier. The hiking in Glacier Bay wasn't great, but we got a few miles in.

In Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic, the main goal was just to actually set foot in the parks and walk around a bit. At Kobuk Valley, we landed on the Kobuk River where we hiked along the shore for a mile or so, returning to our plane by bushwhacking through some of the tundra slightly inland. For Gates of the Arctic, we landed on a little bay of Walker Lake, a beautiful, large, alpine lake in the southern part of the park. There we hiked up across a small peninsula and back. One unexpected treat on this trip was that on the way to Bettles, we were able to
fly between the two mountains that are designated as the actual gates of the Arctic.

We spent two nights in Glacier Bay NP at the Glacier Bay Lodge and three nights at the Bettles Lodge which was our base for the flights to Kobuk and Gates. The Glacier Bay lodge is similar to most lodges in national parks – unique mainly because of their location. Bettles lodge was unique in a lot of ways. First, it is remote and hard to get to. Second, while the lodge itself is on the National Register of Historic Places, the owners are relatively new innkeepers yet manage to provide extremely comfortable accommodations, including delicious food, in an extremely remote part of the US. Third, it is one of the few places from which you can actually visit and set foot in these two national parks. Lastly, Bettles itself is located about 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle. As such it experiences about 30 days worth of 24 hour days without a sunset, 15 days on either side of the summer solstice (around June 20th, which is when we were there). At the Arctic Circle itself, there is one day of 24 hour daylight so you can see, it doesn't take a lot of distance to make a big difference in the length of days.

All in all, the quest has been amazing, and I have enjoyed visiting every one of the 59 parks in what seems like a very short eleven years. Along the way, we were able to visit many other amazing sites including several of our national monuments as well as all of the Canadian National Parks in the the Rocky Mountains of western Canada. We've stayed in some interesting lodging including teepees in Arizona, a cave in New Mexico, the historic Prince of Wales hotel in Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, some very basic motels (dare I say dumps), and a few pretty fancy places.

Now that we have visited and hiked in all US National Parks, we aren't sure what we should set as a goal next. Whatever it is, it will involve hiking and continuing to see the natural wonders of this great United States of ours. At least for as long as body and mind hold together.

On the following pages I'll include some pictures from the trip as well as a little bit more about the pictures on each page. If you click on a picture you'll get a larger version with a caption providing a little more info. When viewing the larger version you can scroll backwards and forwards to see the other pictures on that page. I hope you enjoy reading about and seeing some of the sights we have seen on this trip.

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