National Parks: A Retrospective

Dedicated readers of the blog might find this post a bit premature.  Yes, I did write back in February that my travels would continue into early August, at which point I would reenter civilization and move to Evanston.  But my plans have changed, for a couple reasons.

Olympic National Park

Monday, 7/10 — Friday, 7/14

Beaches.  Glaciers.  Rain forests.  Mountains.  At Olympic National Park, you can find all of these and more.  Many parks along my trip have touted the diversity of their habitats, plants, and animals.  But nowhere have I seen such an assortment of nature as here.

North Cascades National Park

Tuesday, 7/4 — Sunday, 7/9

As gorgeous as the lakes at Glacier, Grand Teton, and Great Basin have been, they all fell short in one way:  they were much too frigid to accommodate swimming.  Boating and hiking allowed me to appreciate them to an extent, but at North Cascades, I immersed myself in the lake experience — literally.

Glacier National Park

Tuesday, 6/27 — Sunday, 7/2

After visiting 22 national parks over several months, one might expect to experience “park fatigue.”  Surely the beauty becomes mundane after a while, right?  Does the 23rd park really provide pleasure commensurate to that of the first?

The answer was resounding: here at Glacier, the sights were as jaw-dropping as I have seen throughout my journey to America’s finest public lands.

Yellowstone National Park

Monday, 6/19 — Monday, 6/26

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed The Act of Dedication, “An Act to set apart a certain Tract of Land lying near the Head-waters of the Yellowstone River as a public Park.”  In doing so, he created the first national park in history, anywhere.  Over time, the federal government modified, strengthened, and expanded the administration of its national parks, for example, with the creation of the National Park Service in 1916 and the signing of the Wilderness Act in 1964.  Visiting Yellowstone evokes a primal reverence, not just for its natural splendor, but also for its unique and essential part in the history of America’s conservation movement.

Grand Teton National Park

Tuesday, 6/13 — Monday, 6/19

Hand a five-year-old a crayon and ask him to draw a few mountains. Odds are, they will look a lot like the Tetons.

Because they lack foothills, the mountains appear to rise up directly and dramatically from the valley floor.  The tallest of which, Grand Teton, looms nearly 14,000′ above sea level but is well within sight.  To visit the park is to visit a fantasyland of alpine lakes, bosky hikes, roaring waterfalls, and above all (quite literally), a group of terrific mountaintops.

Great Basin National Park

Sunday, 6/11 — Monday, 6/12

Great Basin National Park showcases one of the most interesting natural features you’ve probably never heard of:  a completely endorheic series of contiguous watersheds, the largest such area in North America.

[Cue the crickets]

Seriously, this is a pretty cool phenomenon once you think about it.  In plain English, this means that every drop of rain that falls in the Great Basin region — an area covering six states and over 209,000 square miles — will never make it to an ocean.  Rather, all precipitation will either evaporate again, gather in a landlocked lake, or seep underground.  Oh yeah, and the park coincidentally happens to contain the rare bristlecone pine, the oldest living individual organism in the world.  Not bad, right?

Zion National Park

Thursday, 6/1 — Saturday, 6/10

How long would you spend in a national park before you were fully acquainted with the place?

Of course, that answer depends on the park.  Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas contains about 5,500 acres, most of which could realistically be seen in a day or two.  On the other extreme, Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska encompasses over 13 million acres, making it it larger than Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware combined.  After spending 10 days in Zion, I can realistically say that I have a solid grasp of the place.  Regardless, when I departed the park, my mind was brimming with ideas for hikes and wilderness excursions for whenever I might return.

Grand Canyon National Park

Thursday, 5/25 — Thursday, 6/1

Water and time:  the two crucial ingredients that created the Grand Canyon are, coincidentally, the same ingredients necessary for hiking into it.

Jess and I arrived at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park hoping to spend a few days hiking down to the Colorado River and back.  The one-way hike covers 14 miles and descends 5,850 feet, or approximately 540 flights of stairs, so we would have our work cut out for us.  Of course, getting down to the river is a mite easier than hiking back up from it.  What we did instead will remain one of the most exhilarating and excruciating hiking experiences of my life.