Trekking the Planet National Parks Overview

Our next journey, beginning in March 2017, will take us to 27 of the U.S. National Parks, over a 4 1/2 month period! Our goal in visiting 27 National Parks this year, similar to our other journeys, is to focus on their cultural and natural significance.

Camping is a main component of our U.S. National Parks journey, as we travel to 27 parks over four-and-a-half months. In fact, we plan to camp over 100 nights while driving round the United States. We decided to simply convert our 4Runner into a camper van.

If you have been following us for any length of time, you know that we are planners. But what made things more challenging this time was that we need to concurrently sort out the logistics for our NPS trip as well as our return to the Pacific Crest Trail.

For the first park on our NPS journey we chose a familiar place: Joshua Tree National Park, which is only a one hour drive from our home in Palm Desert, CA. The park is unique in that it features plants and wildlife from two deserts: the Mojave and Colorado.

There are four deserts in North America: the Mojave, Great Basin, Chihuahuan and Sonoran. The Sonoran Desert is the most complex and diverse of its counterparts, with its physical features ranging from mountain ranges to arid plains to grassy plateaus to lava flows. It also contains a cactus found nowhere else: the saguaro.

Although petrified wood can be found in all 50 U.S. States, Petrified Forest National Park has some of the highest concentrations in the world. We spent two days exploring this park as well as taking two overnight backpacking trips in the north and south wilderness areas.

The Colorado River is 1,450 miles long and flows through five states. The Green River is a Colorado River tributary. Beginning in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, it meets the Colorado in Canyonlands National Park. We spent three days exploring the park and hiking to the confluence of these two rivers.

Arches National Park is home to over 2,000 arches etched in Entrada sandstone. It has the world’s highest density of natural stone arches. We had been to Arches when our daughters were 2 and 5. Because of their ages, we didn’t hike much, so our goal this time was to do just that.

When we researched national parks to include on our Trekking the Planet NPS journey, we were surprised to discover sand dunes in the middle of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. But little did we know that we would not only be seeing sand dunes, but experiencing snow.

​Carlsbad Caverns, located in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico’s Guadalupe Mountains, is the first of three “cave” national parks we plan to visit on our TTP NPS journey (the other two parks are Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and Wind Cave in South Dakota).

​Over 200 million years ago, the Guadalupe Mountains were a marine reef under a tropical sea. These mountains include Guadalupe Peak, which at 8,751 feet tall is the “top” or highest point in Texas. We spent five days exploring this remote place.

​We were in the state of Texas for 17 days, and most of our time was spent in one place: Big Bend National Park. Big Bend, established in 1944, is the 15th largest national park by area. We spent six days exploring its desert, mountain, and river ecosystems.

Hot Springs National Park, in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, has the distinction of being America’s smallest national park at just 5,500 acres. Its protected status (in 1832) predates Yellowstone, commonly considered to be the world’s first national park.

With over 400 miles of surveyed passages, Mammoth Cave National Park is famous as the longest known cave system in the world. We not only ventured into the cave on two occasions while visiting, but also had the opportunity to complete hikes on both sides of the Green River.

Everglades National Park protects the largest tropical wilderness in the United States. It is the only place in the world where the alligator and crocodiles both roam. We spent four days exploring the park, the third largest in the lower 48 states and covering the southwest tip of Florida.

Twenty-one miles east of the Everglades lies Biscayne National Park. It is the largest protected marine national park in the United States. With 95% of the park on the water, we booked a full-day sailing trip to set foot on one of its keys.

A high-speed catamaran voyage of 70 miles each way along the Gulf of Mexico, exploration of a massive brick fort, and snorkeling underwater? We did all of these things during our time in Dry Tortugas National Park, one of the most remote parks in the lower 48 United States.

Congaree is one of America’s newest national parks, becoming the 58th such protected area in 2003. Comprised of 26,276 acres, Congaree protects the largest intact old-growth bottomless hardwood forest in the U.S. We spent two days in the park’s swampy floodplain forest exploring several trails and camping in a primitive campsite.

One of the largest protected areas east of the Mississippi River, Great Smoky Mountains National Park lies in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. There about 900 miles of paths, including the famous Appalachian Trail. We spent a week hiking a variety of trails in the 522,000 acre park.

Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park sits on the top of the Appalachian Mountains’ Blue Ridge Range. Skyline Drive runs for 105 miles through the park. We spent four days in the park being awe-inspired and humbled by the views while hiking several trails, with a focus on Shenandoah’s waterfalls.

In 1604 French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed along today’s central Maine coast and noted an island that he called “Isle des Monts Deserts” because of the barren appearance of its mountains. Today, Mount Desert Island is the centerpiece of Acadia National Park.

Ohio’s 85 mile long Cuyahoga River flows between Akron and Cleveland and into Lake Erie. By the 20th century, the Cuyahoga River became one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. The sad state of the river culminated when it caught on fire in 1969.

Lake Superior is the northernmost of the Great Lakes. The largest freshwater lake in the world by area, it is more like an ocean or an inland sea, measuring 350 miles wide and 160 miles long. In its northwest corner lies Isle Royale, the largest island in Lake Superior.

In the 18th century, adventurers traveled by canoe on boundary waters between the United States and Canada. Today’s Voyageurs National Park, established in 1975, encompasses 56 miles of the trade route. To best experience this park, we went into the backcountry for 50 hours by foot and paddle.

Seventy five million years ago a shallow sea covered today’s Great Plains area. This sea’s sedimentary layer is just one of the bands of rock comprising today’s Badlands National Park. We spent three days exploring the rock formations and viewing fossils, while hiking on trails under the ancient sea.

Wind Cave, in the southern Black Hills of South Dakota, was created as America’s eighth national park in 1903 and was the first to protect a cave. During the three days we visited, we took two cave tours. We also tracked animals, including bison, along Wind Cave’s backcountry roads.

Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota is the only one of America’s 59 national parks to be named after a person. While in the park, we spent time in all three units, united by the Little Missouri River flowing through them.

The Cascade Mountains run from south British Columbia to Northern California. The highest Cascades peak is Mount Rainier. At 14,410 feet, it is the fifth tallest mountain in the lower 48 states and the 17th highest in the U.S. We spent time hiking in two popular locations: Sunrise and Paradise.

America’s newest national park is Pinnacles, established in 2013, and located about 80 miles southeast of San Jose, California. During our two days in the park we hiked 17.2 miles, scrambled in two talus caves, and scanned the skies for the endangered California condors.

Off the coast of California, between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, lie the Channel Islands. There are eight islands in the 160 mile archipelago, and five of those comprise Channel Islands National Park. Our visit to the 27th and final park on our Trekking the Planet NPS journey was an overnight adventure.

We recently completed an interview, summarizing our favorite parks, challenges we faced, what worked well and our final thoughts from our Trekking the Planet National Parks Roadtrip Adventure.

Our ‘Best of’ Trekking the Planet wallpaper features 46 of our favorite photos from the national parks, national monuments, national memorials and national seashores we visited on our recent journey. The photos in this theme will automatically be rotated every 30 minutes.