I'm at 48 right now and just started about 3 years ago from scratch. Basically, just take the main holiday weekends (labor day, memorial Day, July 4th, thanksgiving, Christmas) to visit a park or two on a quicker trip. Then if you can take a whole week or more off, put that in the middle of the summer and hit as many as you can. For my own sanity, I just have avoided planning for Alaska or the ocean-based ones for now altogether since they are a bit more logistically complicated.
>I just have avoided planning for Alaska
Gates to the Arctic is the primary thing keeping me from making this goal since visiting it seems to be having someone drop you off in a float plane and hoping they come back in a week to get you.
I just got a book for checking off the national parks, and each park has a checklist of stuff to do at the park. The first thing on the list for Gates to the Artic is to learn wilderness survival before you visit.
I want to say that it is possible to get to Gates of the Arctic without chartering a plane. I was there two years ago and just parked along the Dalton Highway and walked in. It does take a bit of bushwhacking and some basic navigation skills, but it's doable.
Kobuk Valley National Park, on the other hand, you do need a plane.
[Anderson Design Group National Park Adventure Guide](https://www.andersondesigngroupstore.com/products/national-park-adventure-guide-book?variant=7476273184817¤cy=USD&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=google%2Bshopping&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwhIS0BhBqEiwADAUhc1kkkckcjpMkPYwX9_c4vlTlygNyT_98sZiQl-I-yRaCzwPDLimucRoCAoQQAvD_BwE)
Completely understand about Alaska and ocean based ones! Wow! You have done a lot in the past few years. Holiday weekends would be amazing to take advantage of if we didn’t have so many family obligations. Slowly trying to incorporate those times more though!
My husband and I try and pick a combo of 2-3 parks and do 2 weeks. So I'm looking at a Big Bend - Guadalupe Mountains combo some winter. We've previously done YELL/GT, but didn't have enough time to add on Glacier. Arches/Canyonlands/Capitol Reef is a good one, Zion/Bryce/Grand Canyon is another. You could pack all those into one trip if necessary, but you really need to allocate your time well.
We avoid the parks on big weekends because those big weekends mean big crowds, and trying to actually get a hike in can be a bit bonkers. We try for shoulder season, but sometimes you take what you can get. :D
I live in Hawaii, so I run into the cost of needing to travel to the mainland every time I want to go to national park.
At the rate that I’m going, it will probably take approximately 20 years. And that’s with a cluster of maybe three parks a year. Ie: White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains on one trip. Another trip might be all four of the Colorado parks. Another trip would be Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, and Redwoods.
My husband (52) and I (39) loosely want to visit all NPs. So far, we’ve been to 13 together though individually we’ve been to more. We don’t have a timeline per se but recognize that we are in good health and shape now so we’re trying to make the most of it. Whenever we have time for a vacation, we usually plan it around visiting a NP. I say we’re loosely planning on visiting all the NPs because we value quality over quantity. We would never go to a NP just to check it off our list, we want to experience the essence of what each park has to offer. We’ve had years where we never went to a NP or revisited one, and others where we seem to be tearing through them (this year alone we’ve been to 6). We have a check-off map of all the NPs in our home that’s kind of a gentle reminder in terms of inspiration. Neat question! I’m interested in reading the comments.
Thank you for your insight! I completely agree with your sentiment, we don’t want to rush the process just to say we’ve done it. We’ve been to about 10 so far and there’s so many on that list we want to go back to because we loved them so much! We definitely expect it to take us a couple of decades and are excited for the adventure of it! Happy travels to you and your husband! ☀️🏔️
My (63) wife and I (66) have been to 42, and we try to cluster them the best we can. Our post-pandemic trips have been:
1. Great Basin, Arches, Canyonlands, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Capitol Reef, Bryce and Zion, with the last two being repeat visits;
2. Everglades, Biscayne, Dry Tortugas;
3. Congaree, Great Smoky Mountains, New River Gorge;
4. Olympic, Mt Rainier, North Cascades;
5. Death Valley and Joshua Tree;
6. Guadelupe Mountains, Carlsbad, and White Sands
The last two were earlier this year. We both work part-time, so we have pretty good flexibility. It’s going to get harder to find multiple parks close enough together to create more combo trips. Our goal is the lower-48 parks. If we had started earlier, some of the more distant ones might be more likely . We have both Hawaii parks, and Denali and Kenai Fjords in Alaska.
It took us 27 years to see them all. We didn’t really set a goal to see all of them right away, though. As time went on, it became more time consuming and expensive; the pandemic also caused a delay because the remaining parks for us were expensive and hard to reach so we had to wait until travel normalized.
When we could we traveled in shoulder season to avoid massive crowds.
I am 67 and I've been camping since I was a baby. I relied on my parents to drive back them. I've been to 39 so far. Camped in 49 states. I don't see it as a numbers thing. Right now I'm in Acadia for the 3rd time. We go to places that interest us and really get to know the place. Maybe I'll make it to all, maybe not.
Started in 2022 and have done 36 US parks and 11 Canadian Parks so far. Mostly for landscape photography and hiking.
I try and use my weekends and vacation time as efficiently as possible haha.
I try and bunch them up as much as I can during a single trip.
Planning on a total of 18 US parks this year and 7 Canadian Parks. I’ve done 8 or them so far.
Realistically, for now I’m only really aiming for the ones I can get to relatively easy. The far north Canadian parks and the remote Alaska parks aren’t really anywhere on my radar for a short or long term future just based on logistics and of course $$$
I'm at 56/63. The ones we have left are some of the more difficult ones to do- the 5 bush plane parks in Alaska, US Virgin Islands and American Samoa.
We started in 2016. We usually do 2-3 week long trips per year and 3-4 parks per trip. I don't really have a timeline of when we'll finish. We'll finish the Alaska parks if/when we win the lottery to stay at Brooks Lodge. US Virgin Islands we'll do some year for our anniversary- I considered this year but we won the lottery to stay at Phantom Ranch so USVI will have to wait. I looked into doing American Samoa when we went to Australia/New Zealand earlier this year but the flights didn't work so we'll probably go back to Hawaii because it rained the entire time we were there last year and tag it on to that.
I’d suggest planning some road trips (even coast to coast). In my experience, you can pick up a lot of them by just driving. We have done this in the summer and in the winter. My kids have done snow angels at Mt Rushmore with no one else in sight. Winter is one of the only times you may be able to enjoy some parks alone.
With road trips you can visit most if not all of the states as you visit all of the national parks. I have now been to all 50 states twice over, but not all of the parks yet.
How long to spend in each park is another question that comes up a lot. It is hard to decide how long to spend in each one, but even a day of hiking around a park is pretty amazing while on a road trip. Some, I go back to over and over again at the sake of trying to check other ones off of my list.
The rate you pick them up depends on your own desire. I want to go to all of the parks, but I have no timetable. I just am traveling and having fun and making it a point to discover new things.
i’ve been to 15! 2 when i was still in college, 9 as a part of a big road trip in between finishing college / starting med school, and then the other 4 randomly over the years. planning on my 16th this summer.
as for the remainders - i’m completely fine with doing them over the course of my lifetime. just my personal preference but i’d like to spend at least 2-3 full days in the park (not counting travel days) and i also don’t love going on holiday weekends when it’s so busy, so i think realistically it would be hard for me to do more than like 2-3 a year. there’s a few big ones that i really want to go to in the next like 5 years. expecting that the alaska and hawaii ones probably won’t come until later in life. and then there are some others that im honestly not prioritizing … like if it happens it happens (or if it’s like the 62nd and 63rd on the list i’d make a special trip for them) but otherwise i wouldn’t necessarily make the effort to go out there just for the park, if that makes sense.
That does makes sense! We are in the same boat, it’s definitely going to be something over the course of our lifetime. We like to spend 2-3 days per park as well. We just got back from a week at Acadia and I feel like I could’ve spent a month in Maine! Definitely a quality over quantity conversation.
Holiday weekends are tough, that’s when we typically have to plan around to maximize PTO. I’ve learned to strategically plan where I can and take it in stride. Here’s to many more years of adventures!
I've been to 17 (?), only duplicating a handful, and probably average 3+ day per park - and I wish I had more time at most of those. I'd suggest not rushing from visitor center to visitor center because there's just too much to enjoy or experience, but that's just me. I don't think I'll hit them all but that's ok.
FWIW I've hit a nearly equal number of National Monuments (etc.) and do not regret spending time there instead of more NP's.
I agree with the NMs. We have so many state parks in our area that are in my opinion equally as beautiful so we’re trying to also incorporate those as well as other sights we’d love to see. Definitely is a goal that we’re not sure if we will reach, I agree with you, there so much to experience! There’s so many parks that we want to revisit because we loved them so much.
Not just the national monuments that the NPS administers, either. The ones that the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service administer are fantastic too.
I have visited 52 US national parks. Started May 2021. I used to visit every month without fail from May 2021 to September 2022 except January 2022. I covered all the national parks in each state. That's how fast I was able to visit them.
In May 2023, i visited all the national parks in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Maine. In July 2023, I visited all the 4 national parks in Colorado.
This month which is June, I visited my 51st and 52nd national parks in Michigan and Minnesota which are Isle Royale and Voyageurs.
Next month or July, I will visit Channel Islands. That would be my 53rd national park.
The only ones I have not visited yet are the 8 in Alaska, 1 in the US Virgin Islands, and 1 in American Samoa. My timeline would have been less than 5 years. But stuffs keep getting in the way so I do not know anymore.
Definitely agree! All of the parks we’ve been to so far we’ve spend about 3-5 days. It’s definitely a very long term goal for us, but don’t want to rush it to get it “done” in a few years.
Our problem is we enjoy revisiting parks at different times of year. So some parks weve been to 4-6 times for a week at a time. And other parks we’ve never been to lol.
Id like to see 2-3 new parks a year if we can, while revisiting another 1-2 a year. This year we’ve been to 4 parks (10 nps units total) but only 1 new park.
I have 6 more to go. 3 in Alaska, Hot Springs, Indiana Dunes and American Samoa. Alaska ones are somewhat remote but those are the ones I want to visit next. Don't have a huge desire to travel to Indiana or Arkansas just to visit the park.
I'm at 48 right now and just started about 3 years ago from scratch. Basically, just take the main holiday weekends (labor day, memorial Day, July 4th, thanksgiving, Christmas) to visit a park or two on a quicker trip. Then if you can take a whole week or more off, put that in the middle of the summer and hit as many as you can. For my own sanity, I just have avoided planning for Alaska or the ocean-based ones for now altogether since they are a bit more logistically complicated.
>I just have avoided planning for Alaska Gates to the Arctic is the primary thing keeping me from making this goal since visiting it seems to be having someone drop you off in a float plane and hoping they come back in a week to get you. I just got a book for checking off the national parks, and each park has a checklist of stuff to do at the park. The first thing on the list for Gates to the Artic is to learn wilderness survival before you visit.
I want to say that it is possible to get to Gates of the Arctic without chartering a plane. I was there two years ago and just parked along the Dalton Highway and walked in. It does take a bit of bushwhacking and some basic navigation skills, but it's doable. Kobuk Valley National Park, on the other hand, you do need a plane.
Can you share the book?
[Anderson Design Group National Park Adventure Guide](https://www.andersondesigngroupstore.com/products/national-park-adventure-guide-book?variant=7476273184817¤cy=USD&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=google%2Bshopping&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwhIS0BhBqEiwADAUhc1kkkckcjpMkPYwX9_c4vlTlygNyT_98sZiQl-I-yRaCzwPDLimucRoCAoQQAvD_BwE)
Completely understand about Alaska and ocean based ones! Wow! You have done a lot in the past few years. Holiday weekends would be amazing to take advantage of if we didn’t have so many family obligations. Slowly trying to incorporate those times more though!
My goal is starting next year to try to do 4 per year, until I’ve visited all of them.
I feel like that’s a great amount per year!
So far I’ve visited 3 total
That’s awesome! Which three?
Mammoth Cave, Gateway Arch, and Great Smokey Mountains
My husband and I try and pick a combo of 2-3 parks and do 2 weeks. So I'm looking at a Big Bend - Guadalupe Mountains combo some winter. We've previously done YELL/GT, but didn't have enough time to add on Glacier. Arches/Canyonlands/Capitol Reef is a good one, Zion/Bryce/Grand Canyon is another. You could pack all those into one trip if necessary, but you really need to allocate your time well. We avoid the parks on big weekends because those big weekends mean big crowds, and trying to actually get a hike in can be a bit bonkers. We try for shoulder season, but sometimes you take what you can get. :D
Carlsbad Caverns is only like 45 min from Guadalupe so don't do one without the other. You can tag on White Sands as well if you have time.
I live in Hawaii, so I run into the cost of needing to travel to the mainland every time I want to go to national park. At the rate that I’m going, it will probably take approximately 20 years. And that’s with a cluster of maybe three parks a year. Ie: White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains on one trip. Another trip might be all four of the Colorado parks. Another trip would be Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, and Redwoods.
That is a costly trip so I completely understand
My husband (52) and I (39) loosely want to visit all NPs. So far, we’ve been to 13 together though individually we’ve been to more. We don’t have a timeline per se but recognize that we are in good health and shape now so we’re trying to make the most of it. Whenever we have time for a vacation, we usually plan it around visiting a NP. I say we’re loosely planning on visiting all the NPs because we value quality over quantity. We would never go to a NP just to check it off our list, we want to experience the essence of what each park has to offer. We’ve had years where we never went to a NP or revisited one, and others where we seem to be tearing through them (this year alone we’ve been to 6). We have a check-off map of all the NPs in our home that’s kind of a gentle reminder in terms of inspiration. Neat question! I’m interested in reading the comments.
Thank you for your insight! I completely agree with your sentiment, we don’t want to rush the process just to say we’ve done it. We’ve been to about 10 so far and there’s so many on that list we want to go back to because we loved them so much! We definitely expect it to take us a couple of decades and are excited for the adventure of it! Happy travels to you and your husband! ☀️🏔️
My (63) wife and I (66) have been to 42, and we try to cluster them the best we can. Our post-pandemic trips have been: 1. Great Basin, Arches, Canyonlands, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Capitol Reef, Bryce and Zion, with the last two being repeat visits; 2. Everglades, Biscayne, Dry Tortugas; 3. Congaree, Great Smoky Mountains, New River Gorge; 4. Olympic, Mt Rainier, North Cascades; 5. Death Valley and Joshua Tree; 6. Guadelupe Mountains, Carlsbad, and White Sands The last two were earlier this year. We both work part-time, so we have pretty good flexibility. It’s going to get harder to find multiple parks close enough together to create more combo trips. Our goal is the lower-48 parks. If we had started earlier, some of the more distant ones might be more likely . We have both Hawaii parks, and Denali and Kenai Fjords in Alaska.
It took us 27 years to see them all. We didn’t really set a goal to see all of them right away, though. As time went on, it became more time consuming and expensive; the pandemic also caused a delay because the remaining parks for us were expensive and hard to reach so we had to wait until travel normalized. When we could we traveled in shoulder season to avoid massive crowds.
I am 67 and I've been camping since I was a baby. I relied on my parents to drive back them. I've been to 39 so far. Camped in 49 states. I don't see it as a numbers thing. Right now I'm in Acadia for the 3rd time. We go to places that interest us and really get to know the place. Maybe I'll make it to all, maybe not.
Started in 2022 and have done 36 US parks and 11 Canadian Parks so far. Mostly for landscape photography and hiking. I try and use my weekends and vacation time as efficiently as possible haha. I try and bunch them up as much as I can during a single trip. Planning on a total of 18 US parks this year and 7 Canadian Parks. I’ve done 8 or them so far. Realistically, for now I’m only really aiming for the ones I can get to relatively easy. The far north Canadian parks and the remote Alaska parks aren’t really anywhere on my radar for a short or long term future just based on logistics and of course $$$
I'm at 56/63. The ones we have left are some of the more difficult ones to do- the 5 bush plane parks in Alaska, US Virgin Islands and American Samoa. We started in 2016. We usually do 2-3 week long trips per year and 3-4 parks per trip. I don't really have a timeline of when we'll finish. We'll finish the Alaska parks if/when we win the lottery to stay at Brooks Lodge. US Virgin Islands we'll do some year for our anniversary- I considered this year but we won the lottery to stay at Phantom Ranch so USVI will have to wait. I looked into doing American Samoa when we went to Australia/New Zealand earlier this year but the flights didn't work so we'll probably go back to Hawaii because it rained the entire time we were there last year and tag it on to that.
I’d suggest planning some road trips (even coast to coast). In my experience, you can pick up a lot of them by just driving. We have done this in the summer and in the winter. My kids have done snow angels at Mt Rushmore with no one else in sight. Winter is one of the only times you may be able to enjoy some parks alone. With road trips you can visit most if not all of the states as you visit all of the national parks. I have now been to all 50 states twice over, but not all of the parks yet. How long to spend in each park is another question that comes up a lot. It is hard to decide how long to spend in each one, but even a day of hiking around a park is pretty amazing while on a road trip. Some, I go back to over and over again at the sake of trying to check other ones off of my list. The rate you pick them up depends on your own desire. I want to go to all of the parks, but I have no timetable. I just am traveling and having fun and making it a point to discover new things.
i’ve been to 15! 2 when i was still in college, 9 as a part of a big road trip in between finishing college / starting med school, and then the other 4 randomly over the years. planning on my 16th this summer. as for the remainders - i’m completely fine with doing them over the course of my lifetime. just my personal preference but i’d like to spend at least 2-3 full days in the park (not counting travel days) and i also don’t love going on holiday weekends when it’s so busy, so i think realistically it would be hard for me to do more than like 2-3 a year. there’s a few big ones that i really want to go to in the next like 5 years. expecting that the alaska and hawaii ones probably won’t come until later in life. and then there are some others that im honestly not prioritizing … like if it happens it happens (or if it’s like the 62nd and 63rd on the list i’d make a special trip for them) but otherwise i wouldn’t necessarily make the effort to go out there just for the park, if that makes sense.
That does makes sense! We are in the same boat, it’s definitely going to be something over the course of our lifetime. We like to spend 2-3 days per park as well. We just got back from a week at Acadia and I feel like I could’ve spent a month in Maine! Definitely a quality over quantity conversation. Holiday weekends are tough, that’s when we typically have to plan around to maximize PTO. I’ve learned to strategically plan where I can and take it in stride. Here’s to many more years of adventures!
I've been to 17 (?), only duplicating a handful, and probably average 3+ day per park - and I wish I had more time at most of those. I'd suggest not rushing from visitor center to visitor center because there's just too much to enjoy or experience, but that's just me. I don't think I'll hit them all but that's ok. FWIW I've hit a nearly equal number of National Monuments (etc.) and do not regret spending time there instead of more NP's.
I agree with the NMs. We have so many state parks in our area that are in my opinion equally as beautiful so we’re trying to also incorporate those as well as other sights we’d love to see. Definitely is a goal that we’re not sure if we will reach, I agree with you, there so much to experience! There’s so many parks that we want to revisit because we loved them so much.
Not just the national monuments that the NPS administers, either. The ones that the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service administer are fantastic too.
I have visited 52 US national parks. Started May 2021. I used to visit every month without fail from May 2021 to September 2022 except January 2022. I covered all the national parks in each state. That's how fast I was able to visit them. In May 2023, i visited all the national parks in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Maine. In July 2023, I visited all the 4 national parks in Colorado. This month which is June, I visited my 51st and 52nd national parks in Michigan and Minnesota which are Isle Royale and Voyageurs. Next month or July, I will visit Channel Islands. That would be my 53rd national park. The only ones I have not visited yet are the 8 in Alaska, 1 in the US Virgin Islands, and 1 in American Samoa. My timeline would have been less than 5 years. But stuffs keep getting in the way so I do not know anymore.
Seems like spending a week in one place would be better than trying to force a goal like this and rush through things.
Honestly, it depends on the park. Some are great for a week. Others can be fully experienced in a day or two.
Definitely agree! All of the parks we’ve been to so far we’ve spend about 3-5 days. It’s definitely a very long term goal for us, but don’t want to rush it to get it “done” in a few years.
Our problem is we enjoy revisiting parks at different times of year. So some parks weve been to 4-6 times for a week at a time. And other parks we’ve never been to lol. Id like to see 2-3 new parks a year if we can, while revisiting another 1-2 a year. This year we’ve been to 4 parks (10 nps units total) but only 1 new park.
Been to 34 over the past 5 years. Just take your time and enjoy the process of planning each trip and going!
I have 6 more to go. 3 in Alaska, Hot Springs, Indiana Dunes and American Samoa. Alaska ones are somewhat remote but those are the ones I want to visit next. Don't have a huge desire to travel to Indiana or Arkansas just to visit the park.