National Parks List — Mostly Visited

Posted this list originally here. Now updating!

I no longer think that I necessarily need to see every single US National Park before I die. The hamburger list has left me a changed man. OTOH, I’m pretty interested in going to Samoa now, so, you know. Things change. Alpha by park and I bolded the ones I visited while on the recent cross-country road trip:

1. Acadia: visited on road trip.
2. American Samoa National Park: not visited.
3. Arches: visited! A few times, back in Utah days. Very pretty. I like Canyonlands better, though. There can be only one.
4. Badlands: not visited.
5. Big Bend: visited on road trip.
6. Biscayne: not visited.
7. Black Canyon of the Gunnison: not visited.
8. Bryce Canyon: visited! Very photogenic and pretty small for a western-US park.
9. Canyonlands: visited! Way prettier than I expected and seemingly less crowded than the other Southern Utah parks.
10. Capital Capitol Reef: visited on road trip.
11. Carlsbad Caverns: visited on road trip.
12. Channel Islands: not visited.
13. Congaree: visited on road trip.
14. Crater Lake: visited on road trip.
15. Cuyahoga: I sort of drove through it. Half credit?
16. Death Valley: visited! Went last November and took photos. I didn’t think it was so amazing when I was there, but some of those pictures make it look dang pretty.
17. Denali: not visited.
18. Dry Tortugas: not visited.
19. Everglades: not visited.
20. Gates of the Arctic: not visited.
21. Glacier: visited on road trip.
22. Glacier Bay: not visited.
23. Grand Canyon: visited! And I’ve always meant to go back to hike and see what there is to see on the northern rim. Some day, some day. For that matter, some day I’m going to buy a scanner and scan all my conventional photos from pre-digital days. Just not today.
24. Grand Teton: visited! Another one I should probably go back to in order to actually explore. The family reunion we had there didn’t involve much of the park. (Visited again on the road trip, fwiw.)
25. Great Basin: not visited.
26. Great Sand Dunes: not visited. (Seriously? “Great” Sand Dunes…? I should probably visit just to confirm/refute my skepticism.)
27. Great Smoky Mountains: visited on road trip.
28. Guadalupe Mountains: visited on road trip.
29. Haleakala: not visited. Next Hawaii trip though. Maybe.
30. Hawaii Volcanoes: not visited. February! (Hopefully.)
31. Hot Springs: drove through it on road trip and, since that’s about all there is to do there other than getting naked and bathing, I’m counting it. I ate lunch there.
32. Isle Royale: not visited.
33. Joshua Tree: visited! Was interesting enough the first time, but the second time, well — I kind of figure that my second trip to Mars will also reveal the destination to be a desolate, ultimately uninteresting landscape.
34. Katmai: not visited.
35. Kenai Fjords: not visited.
36. Kings Canyon: visited! (So they are separate parks!)
37. Kobuk Valley: not visited.
38. Lake Clark: not visited. Is there any part of Alaska that’s not a national park? And I sort of get the sense that they have all these parks because there was no one who wanted to live there anyway.
39. Lassen Volcanic: visited on road trip.
40. Mammoth Cave: visited on road trip.
41. Mesa Verde: visited! I remember being hot and very, very sleepy — but a fun trip with Fresh Goat and ErinJ and at least one of the goatlings. I think JA was on that trip too.
42. Mt. Rainier: visited! Many times, but most recently evidenced here. Also visited on road trip.
43. North Cascades: visited!
44. Olympic: visited! Some day I want to go when it isn’t fogged over, though. And I should probably go to the beach and rain forest side of it one of these days. Re-visited on road trip.
45. Petrified Forest: not visited.
46. Redwood: not visited. Probably this weekend though.
47. Rocky Mountain: not visited.
48. Saguaro: not visited. I don’t think — although this photo was taken really, really close to the park entrance.
49. Sequoia: visited! Big trees. Big trees.
50. Shenandoah: visited on road trip.
51. Theodore Roosevelt: visited on road trip.
52. Virgin Islands: not visited.
53. Voyageurs: not visited.
54. Wind Cave: visited on road trip (again, just drove through it, but I saw caves in the area, looked at *more* bison in the park — I’m counting it).
55. Wrangell-St. Elias: not visited.
56. Yellowstone: visited! I was a kid, though, so mostly I remember the smell of sulfur and a geyser. Visited again on road trip.
57. Yosemite: visited on road trip.
58. Zion: visited! And the Virgin River Narrows was the best hike ever.

Okay, so: barely mostly (31 1/2 of 58). Still technically correct.

bkd