National Parks 2016: Intro

I retired in April, 2016. Two-hour commutes (each way) for 23 years in and out of Boston….DONE! Emilie is still teaching so I spent that spring planning our first America Road Trip for the upcoming summer. We decided we wanted to visit and hike a series of National Parks out west. So, that’s what we did. We were going on the summer of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, so we anticipated busy parks. But, we really wanted to be spontaneous on the trip so we took our chances and chose not to book many campsites or motel rooms in advance. We did purchase an “America the Beautiful” National Parks Pass for $80, which allows for unlimited entry to all National Parks, and many National Monuments for one year…easily worth it. I figured out time distances between target parks and other places on the agenda, estimated how long we might stay at any given place, and plotted out a loop course starting from, and ending in Michigan. We first spent a week at Em’s dad and mom’s Lake Michigan beach house in South Haven. The only advance reservations made were the first two nights each at a campground in Teddy Roosevelt National Park and a lodge at Glacier National Park. I made those reservations in April and was lucky to get them so late. To help chart out activities such as specific hiking trails, scenic roads, camping, wildlife encounter, parking, etc. I downloaded various Chimani National Park apps to my iPad. These apps were absolutely fantastic. They provided everything we needed to know about visiting every park. We highly recommend Chimani. I created a spreadsheet outlining the destinations, travel distances and times, estimated durations of stay, where we would (or might) stay, and highlights of each destination we wanted to see or do. Considering the number of miles we would be driving we also downloaded the Offbeat Attractions app. This was also fantastic. It alerted us to unusual, and some not so unusual attractions that we would be driving by or near along the journey. We made a lot of side trips to see some of these oddities, and they almost all were worth it. These are referenced throughout the various posts. I recommend an Expedia account as well for a road trip like this. Most hotels were reserved through Expedia and so we earned points and saved money on some stays, and their customer service can come in handy, such as when I reserved a hotel in Salt Lake City for the wrong night.

We packed, and I mean PACKED Emilie’s Subaru Forrester with everything we thought we would need in order to camp comfortably (glamping as some call it) and be spontaneous. We bought new backpacks, new hiking shoes, clothing, and accessories, two air mattresses, camp and car food and cookware, and a new Yeti cooler to keep things cold for a long time. We had pros at REI help us choose the best equipment, most importantly a properly fitted backpack. We had an LL Bean 6-person tent (which means it sleeps two people comfortably). In the car, we had a large bin of clothes each, a large bin of food, backpacks, two bins of camping and other utility gear, a small cooler, a hotel travel bag, and the Yeti. Plus, we had a large Thule-like bag which held our tent, sleeping bags, and air mattresses. Of course, the front console was packed with the essentials: several boxes of Hot Tamales and Good & Plenty.

Emilie did the lion’s share of the driving as I navigated, made lodging reservations, planned activities, and updated the journal. I drove whenever we were in a city since Emilie hates driving in cities, and I graduated from the Boston School of Road Warriors…with honors. Google maps ruled the trip.

Here is the summary of our 40-day trip:

National Parks and Monuments Road Trip

July – August 2016

9 National Parks Visited (in order visited)

Teddy Roosevelt

Glacier

North Cascades

Olympic National Park