Posts tagged as:

national parks

National Parks I visited in 2010

2010 was an uncommon year for me in my national park quest. For years and years, Kim and I would have gone on several trips each year, all with the sole purpose of marking dozens of parks off of our list. This year, things had changed. Even so, I was able to make it to [...]

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Celebrate National Park Week with free admission all week

The National Park System includes some of the most significant and inspiring places in the country. The parks have played a special role in my life, and this is a great opportunity to experience them. From the National Park Foundation, who is partnering with the National Park Service on it: Celebrate National Park Week April [...]

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Guns in National Parks is a dumb idea

Earlier this week, the law permitting loaded firearms in National Parks went into effect. In order to force it through, the bill had been attached as an amendment to the unrelated credit card reform bill. The new law repeals the Reagan-era practice of allowance of guns in parks, as long as they were unloaded and [...]

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A short guide to park passes

When someone hears about my national park quest, they often ask me if I’ve visited a particular place that they have enjoyed. As often as not, the location they mention is not part of the National Park System. That’s not particularly surprising. There are a wide variety of land management agencies at the national, state, [...]

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Roundup of our Bayou roadtrip

I belatedly realized that I hadn’t posted a summary of our Bayou roadtrip yet. Well, here it is. We drove 4,106 miles through 5 states in 11 days to see 11 parks, plus spend New Years Eve in the French Quarter of New Orleans. In doing so, we finished off the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, [...]

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Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site

After our wedding, Kim and I took a roadtrip across the South to visit a bunch of national parks as part of our quest. I commented last month that one of the benefits of our quest was that it brought us to see some really cool places that we otherwise wouldn’t have. One of those [...]

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An updated listing of our National Parks quest

Here’s an updated list of National Parks that I’ve visited as part of my quest. After last week’s trip, my total now stands at 189 of the 392 total units (or 189 of the 348 units in the continental US shown on the map above). Over the next week or so, I’ll update my main [...]

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We need an America the Beautiful pass for kids

For the ninth or tenth straight year, Kim and I bought an America the Beautiful Pass (or its predecessors, the National Parks Passport and Golden Eagle Passport). For $80 a year, it’ll get you and your family into every National Park unit and the other federal land management agency lands for free. Given the fabulous [...]

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Our park stamps

As many of you know, Kim and I are on a quest to visit all of the 391 units of the National Park Service. Well, we’ve established several routines when it comes to marking off each of these units, including taking a picture of us there, snapping a shot of our Forester in front of [...]

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Where we went this summer

It’s been a couple of months since we returned from our post-wedding roadtrip through the South. It was an interesting trip, one that didn’t much resemble our usual national park trips: we stayed in a hotel every night, we spent most of our time at historical sites (as opposed to natural sites), and, well, we [...]

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