#008: What's Your Favorite National Park?

This is the most common question I receive when I tell people that we've explored 61 US National Parks. My answer depends on the story behind each park adventure.

The most common question I get when I tell people that we’ve explored 61 out of 63 US National Parks is, ‘Which one was your favorite?’

I can’t blame anyone for asking that. It’s a simple way to follow up to such a bold claim. But it’s a difficult question to answer.

First, every park is a special snowflake. But yes, there are parks that we did not enjoy too much. I could create a ranking system based on criteria like Scenery, Sunset Views, Explorability, Reachability, Tourist Overload, and others. Maybe one day after I visit all 63, I’ll undertake that exercise.

But what’s the point? As cliche as it sounds, it really is ‘about the journey and not the destination’. Or, as I like to say it, ‘it’s about the story behind it’.

Exploring has an 80/20 rule. 80% of the time that we’ve spent on these adventures we were driving/flying to the park, finding/cooking food, setting up tents or checking into hotels/AirBnb’s. It’s a lot of logistics. Only 20% is the actual ‘modern John Muir’ style exploration within the parks.

And usually that 20% is worth the 80%.

But that 80% not easy. I’ve questioned why I’ve set out on this quest but for whatever reason it never felt optional. Once I set the goal of visiting all 63 parks, it had to be done! And I can definitely say that overall the 20% was worth the 80%.

Yet as we approach the final two parks in this adventure I still struggle to answer the question ‘What’s your favorite park?’

The main problem with answering this question is twofold: 1) it’s human nature to compare; and 2) you can’t control adventure.

Let’s use our visit to Hot Springs National Park to illustrate point one. If we had visited Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas as our first park, we probably would have had a higher opinion of it. But after having seen the wonders of the western National Parks, we were asking each other, ‘How can this possibly be a National Park?’

To be fair, the origin story of the park is somewhat interesting—it was originally a bathhouse meant to heal ailments—but we didn’t visit in the 1800’s to cure a disease.

So the parks you visit will impact those you visit afterwards. We are always comparing experiences—that’s human nature.

And to illustrate point two (you can’t control adventure) let’s use our visit to Utah’s National Parks which was a one-week, three-park road trip as I was in between jobs during the pandemic. I left zero room for margin and I tried to control every little detail. In the process, I became too stressed, and didn’t have as much fun. Like a mission-crazed maniac, I was speeding from park to park, checking the schedule trying to squeeze in as many trails and sights as possible.

Everything we saw was amazing but I only had a few minutes to spare for every sight. I couldn’t pause to reflect, to drink in as much as possible. At one point, I even got pulled over for speeding when driving from Zion to Bryce. I’ve since begun leaving in more margin and planning less. You live, you learn.

For these two reasons, it’s very hard to claim ‘my favorite park’. Because it’s really all about the intangibles like your mindset and the random acts of adventure that occur along the way. I have a magnet at home that says, ‘adventure begins when plans end.’ Exactly.

Nearly a decade ago, we weren’t yet on the ‘all 63 parks’ mission, and we visited our first-ever National Park—Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, our home state. This was our first National Park experience together, and I’ll never forget that August sunset drive (picture below from that trip). It was the first time we saw something that made us think, ‘Wow. I wonder what else is out here?’

After that sunset drive, we pulled into the park and found our reserved campground waiting for us just after sunset.

Arriving at the campsite, our white Hyundai Tuscon was full of fresh, unopened gear—from a much too large 8-person tent to a classic dark green Coleman grill. It was an exciting feeling, but also daunting. I turned on my new headlamp and started opening the tent. I spent about an hour and a half setting it up in the dark.

Just as I was setting up the tent, rain started dropping. I raced to finish, hammering in the final tent pole, and we ran back-and-forth from the car grabbing all of the sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets. We were like two kids giggling and having fun together. This is the spirit of camping. But the fun didn’t last long.

I barely slept a wink. A few hours into the night, I was tossing and turning as I heard what I thought was a ferocious bear ready to chew our heads off. So I did what any husband would do and stayed on alert, listening to every little noise that made its way through the thin tent walls, which was everything outdoors. When I dared to zip open the window on the tent in the morning, I looked outside to see a few harmless deer walking around eating leaves around our tent. Oops, might have overreacted.

That’s just one of many sub-adventures we had together on the longer adventure. It’s about the story within each one of them that makes them all my favorite. Each person’s adventures are yours alone, but anyone that’s been on an adventure can relate to the shared experience of entering the unknown, discovering your courage, and moving forward into the dark black canyon.

Just a few weeks after that starting point, we drove north toward another canyon, to Canyon Campground in Yellowstone National Park. We departed our small apartment in Golden, Colorado and stopped for a few nights at Grand Teton National Park, then made our way to camp for a full week in Yellowstone in early September.

I was so disappointed when arriving at Grand Teton. It was a foggy day, and I hadn’t seen a single mountain yet. What a let-down. Little did I know the Grand Teton mountains were only a few minutes from appearing before our eyes. As I drove closer, some clouds moved, and I parked to see this amazing mountain range. I shouted to my wife, ‘Look, there they are honey!’ (the picture below is what we saw, yet doesn’t do the experience justice).

Then we spent a week in Yellowstone, which has so many stories and experiences that it would take me another essay to write about them all. Because that experience was so special I want to say, ‘Yellowstone is my favorite park.’ But it’s the easy way out. Everyone knows it’s a top global park and the first National Park created in the world. It’s on top of everyone’s list.

But I still look at Black Canyon a ‘favorite park’ in its own way. As a Coloradan these past 10+ years I’ve gone back to Black Canyon at least five more times. I’m also an avid fly fisherman, and I’ve since fished the Gunnison river that flows through that canyon. There are also never any tour buses or crowds of tourists there. So the combination of fishing in the park and the fact that it was our first park has made it one of my favorites.

Yet I still feel the pressure to actually answer everyone’s question. I mean, how can I not have a favorite park right? Just decide man! In rapid fire social situations, I usually default to the most climactic experience that I can remember in the entire 63 National Parks journey. That would be our trip to American Samoa National Park.

Yes, there’s a National Park in the US territory of American Samoa. And it is not easy to get to. There are only a few flights a week that leave from Honolulu and head south to the Pago Pago airport each week so the trip needed to be precisely planned. We rented a car, had an AirBnb, and my birthday was that same week.

It was incredibly rewarding when we found ourselves sitting on our own beach (picture below) in a National Park while snorkeling and soaking in the South Pacific sunlight. It was the ultimate National Parks adventure. I couldn’t have designed any of it, and it ranks as my personal ‘top overall park experience’. So I usually just say that this is ‘my favorite park’.

What made it my favorite? I could list specifics like the uniqueness of the landscapes, the tropical fish, the distance from where we live, and the climate. But then I would be subtracting the intangibles like the painful effort it took to get there, celebrating my birthday, randomly meeting a local guide that took us snorkeling, and the romantic beach time with my wife. A lot of energy went into making that adventure happen, and that made it special to me personally.

My wife has her own ‘favorite park’ though. So we agree to disagree on this. If you’re curious, I think she’s set on Olympic National Park in Washington. It’s definitely up there and an amazing park, but to me it doesn’t beat American Samoa or a few others on my list 🙂. Though I will credit Olympic fans: being able to traverse from a mountain peak to a rainforest to a beach in one day is really amazing.

The fact that she and I disagree on our favorite park makes my point. Everyone’s favorite park depends on your own personal story behind it. There are times when I say ‘my favorite’ park is Black Canyon, because I still remember the special stories behind that first trip out there.

So maybe one day I’ll generate a proper list with analytics that uses criteria like visitor center quality, tourist overload, things to see, and other factors that might contribute to an overall score. But even when I do that, the main factor will always be the story behind your adventure at the park.

So what’s your favorite park? What is the story behind it? How did it change you?