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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
