Visiting National Parks

How many National Parks have I been to? Which one is my favorite? These questions were posed today in the question-of-the-day on my local Mommy forum. Normally these questions are the easy to answer kind, but every once in a while, along comes a question that really makes you stop and think. Like today's question.

I've been to lots of National Parks all over the country, and I wouldn't have a clue as to how to answer which one was my favorite. So I figure I'll write a blog about the ones I've visited and maybe through writing about them, I'll discover which one was truly my favorite.

I went to the National Park Service's website and found their Park Locator tool: http://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm#CP_JUMP_275503

I clicked on every state I've ever visited and searched the map for all National Parks, National Monuments, National Recreation Areas, National Historic Trails and National Seashores. Here's my list and general summary of each one. I'm starting with "official" National Parks. There are 58 total, and I've been to 5 of them. So I've visited 8.6% of all the national parks in the US. Neato.

1.) Crater Lake National Park - this is my most recent park visit. I went with my Mom, Dad, brother and his girlfriend in September 2011. The lake and surrounding mountains reminded me of a giant cereal bowl filled halfway with crystal clear blue milk and a floating clump of marshmallows in the middle of it(really, it was just an island, but hey, I'm trying to be a little creative with my writing, can't you tell?) There were lots of people cycling around the lake and I talked to 2 women in the gift shop who had just finished the ride and they said it was great. It's a 30 mile loop. I'm putting that on my Bucket List!



2.) Lassen Volcanic National Park - I went here one time in the fall of 1996 when I was a freshman at Chico State. Lassen was only 70 miles away from campus. I went there with a boy I'd met from my floor, which was a special floor called the Health and Wellness dorm. I don't even remember his name, but he suggested we go for a hike one Saturday, and since we were the only 2 kids in the entire dorm who weren't hungover at 8am, I decided to go along. I remember having a lot of fun. We hiked on some trail that wasn't really well marked, and soon, there was no trail at all. And we were lost. But I do remember that this guy grew up in a very remote area(Covelo, CA) and he said he hiked all the time in the Mendocino National Forest on trails that weren't really trails, and he was fine. So I went along with his backcountry skills and followed him like the lost puppy I was. We wandered around for what felt like half a day. Finally we found his car and boy, was I happy! But I wasn't letting him know that! I pretended to be "totally cool" with being lost in the middle of nowhere.



3.) Shenandoah National Park - Rob and I camped here for a week in August 2008. Well, to be honest, we didn't camp *in* the national park. We stayed in a nearby private campground that was just 5 minutes away from the northern entrance to the park, in Front Royal, Virginia. We brought our dogs, our bikes and Rob's dialysis machine and all the supplies needed for that. We had a wonderful time here and went for 2 long'ish hikes, went fishing/kayaking, and mountain biking despite Rob being weak and tired from being on dialysis.



On one of the hikes, we found a great swimming hole to jump into. It was really hot that day, so the ice cold water felt really good. Shockingly good.



4.) Theodore Roosevelt National Park - I stayed here one night in July 2002 while I was finishing up a big, almost-across-the-country solo road trip. North Dakota is a pretty boring state to drive through. After eating lunch in Bismarck and sight-seeing at the ugliest state capitol ever, I hopped back in the car to see if I could reach Montana by the end of day. I would've made it, except I decided to stop in a small town called Dickinson and adopt a dog. My first dog ever. My first real pet ever. I fell in love. We drove away from the city animal shelter and it was hot, and I didn't want her to be uncomfortable in the backseat, so I decided to stop in a town near the Montana/North Dakota border called Medora. Very cool little tourist trap and hey, I actually got 3 lines of signal strength on my cell phone. Enough to call my husband (boyfriend at the time) and tell him how crazy I was to adopt a dog on my road trip. Anyway, this tourist trap was a mile away from the entrance to Teddy Roosevelt Nat'l Park, and it was around dinnertime, so I got a campsite for the night. I didn't see much of the park. Just the campground and bathhouse, really. I tried going for a bike ride after dinner, but my new dog just didn't want to cooperate with staying tied to the picnic table! I know, I know, I was a bad pet owner tying my dog up to a 5 foot lead. But seriously, I didn't know any better. Remember, this was my 1st pet! Anyway, while going to bed that night in the tent, a HUGE storm came over us. I grabbed my dog and ran to the bathhouse to take shelter while it passed. Once it was over, I went back to my tent and fell asleep with my new dog so cuddled up around my head, I didn't even need my pillow. A couple hours later, , another HUGE storm! This thunderstorm was so bad I expected to see Count von Count counting lightning strikes when I unzipped my tent's rain fly. I was attempting to get somewhere safer than a dome of nylon. A dome next to a big tree. The bathhouse seemed too far away. So I ran (with my dog) to my car, parked a few feet away. As soon as I slammed the door shut, I saw a big strike of lightning land what seriously felt like 10 feet away from me. I started the car and drove like a madwoman out of the campground and to the safest place I could think of - the I-94 overpass. I stayed there until the storm passed, scared for the first time of being alone on my solo road trip. My new dog didn't bat an eye at the thunderstorm. Proof that she was a great dog. Man I still miss that dog!



5.) Yosemite National Park - I went here with Rob while he was my new boyfriend in October 2001. We'd only been officially dating for about 2 weeks. He wanted to take me somewhere really cool for my birthday and he let me choose from a couple options. I chose Yosemite because I'd never been there before, which is shocking coming from an outdoorsy NorCal girl who camped many summers as a kid with her family just a stones throw from Yosemite. Rob said he wanted to hike Half Dome and I'd heard people talking about it before and it sounded like fun. It was a 17 miles round trip hike that can be done in a day, but most people break it up into 2 days. We decided to do it in a day. It was a beautiful hike. And the climb up the ropes at the very top was really scary! We stayed too long up at the top looking at the amazing views, so we had to do the last half of the hike in the dark. We helped a bunch of people down off the trail that night. People who were not well equipped for the hike. People like these guys who only had a keychain mini mag lite to guide them down the mountain:




Well that's it for National Parks. My next post will be about the other National Park Service areas I've been to, which will include National Monuments, National Recreation Areas and National Seashores. Once I'm all done writing about my park visits, I'll choose my favorite.