As each year slips by, I become more convinced that surrounding myself with nature is the only sane way to go about this thing called life.
I feel most at home, peaceful, happy and fulfilled when I am immersed in a forest.
I love photographing the way sunlight caresses moss. Trekking to a waterfall. Floating in the ocean. Walking along a grassy embankment at sunrise, eyes to the sky. Meditating on a beach.
That’s why I’ve only become even more enamored with our country’s amazing national parks in recent years.
Visiting national parks – or any great nature preserve – is so amazing for body, mind and spirit. When I wrote about my love of national parks four years ago, we had only visited a few of them.
Now, we’ve visited enough national parks to know that this is our family’s personal quest: to see them all – or at least as many as we can.
Here’s a list of recent national parks that we’ve visited and why we liked them:
- Cuyahoga Valley National Park right here in Ohio is our closest NP and also one of our favorites. It has waterfalls, caves, gorges, seemingly endless forests and so much more – and it’s only a couple of hours away for us. We definitely plan to spend more time hiking here!
- Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was breathtakingly gorgeous and everything I had hoped it would be. Red rocks, colorful canyons, curious critters and incredible energy made this an unforgettable spring break trip in 2021. I long to return here someday; I’d love to stay in the park next time and watch a sunrise or sunset over the canyon.
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee made for a wonderful spring break getaway with our girls back in 2019. While we didn’t get to check a bear sighting off our wishlist, we enjoyed ourselves and made some great memories hiking and spending time in nature.
- Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky was a fun side quest on our way from Ohio to Tennessee. As the largest cave system in the world, Mammoth Cave is certainly worth visiting once – although I learned here that I do prefer above-ground nature experiences to subterranean ones.
- New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia is the newest NP. We stopped here, specifically at the historic New River Gorge Bridge, during our 2023 spring break road trip. Rushing rapids and gorgeous forests make this a scenic and lovely spot to visit and explore.
At New River Gorge, we purchased the national parks passport so we have even more incentive to visit NPs and collect stamps and stickers to decorate our passport.
After the great NP trips above, we now have many more national parks on our travel bucket list. Before this summer ends, I hope to have visited at least one of them.
I’ll admit there are a few wild cards on my national parks wish list – see if you can tell which ones I mean.
- Indiana Dunes National Park in Indiana has big-city views of Chicago, Lake Michigan beaches and 15,000 acres of striking plant and bird biodiversity. It’s less than five hours away from us by car and I can’t wait to check it out!
- National Park of American Samoa in, you guessed it, American Samoa, sounds like a tropical paradise dream come true. It’s located in the heart of the South Pacific and offers sights, sounds and experiences found in no other national park in the United States. If I ever go missing, look for me in Pago Pago.
- Isle Royale National Park in Michigan is a remote island wilderness in the middle of Lake Superior accessible only by boat, ferry or seaplane. It’s actually an archipelago or group of islands; there are more than 400 islands in the park. I don’t know if I’m truly hardcore enough to visit this place, but it sure sounds wild and beautiful.
- Ever since our 2021 Grand Canyon trip, I’ve been dreaming of red rock canyons. That’s why I’m feening to take an epic Utah NP road trip covering Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. It may sound greedy but if we’re going to visit a national park or two in Utah, we may as well hit all five of these guys, right? They call it the Grand Circle for a reason. Let’s gooooooo!
- Virgin Islands National Park in St. John, US Virgin Islands, checks off so many boxes for me. This island is both a tropical paradise and two-thirds national park? Sign me up. Honey, if you’re reading this, I found the perfect AirBnB for us…
Which NPs have you visited, and do you have any on your own travel wish list? I’d love to hear your national park stories in the comments below or over on Facebook or Instagram.
