Growing up, my parent’s ideal family vacation was piling everyone in the car for a national park road trip. We weren’t the typical drive down to Florida and lay on the beach for a whole week type of family. My parents never really took us on a big road trip until my sister and I were much older, because they wanted us to remember it and every little kid wants to go to Disney World.
My first experience of a national park was when I was eight or nine years old. At the time, my dad was scheduled to go on a work trip to Keystone, Colorado and he decided to bring the rest of the family along. While we were there, I went to my very first national park, Rocky Mountain National Park. At such a young age, I was extremely fascinated by the tall mountains and the fact that there was still snow on the ground even in the summer. During the whole trip, my sister and I recorded our experiences on our brand-new iPads. To this day, my family loves to gather around and reminisce about our first trip to a national park, even though half of my videos are of the car because I was too little to look out the window.
My parents continued to take us to national parks as I got older. One spring break, we went to Charleston, South Carolina, where we went to Smoky Mountains National Park and a lesser-known park called Congaree National Park. As the years went on we also went on many other small road trips to the parks in Kentucky and South Dakota.
When I got to high school, my parents decided to plan the biggest, most unforgettable, two-week-long road trip to Utah. To any other family in Michigan, driving to Utah seems a little much, but to my family we had experience. The drive down to Colorado just six years before prepared me for this. This trip included us discovering eight new national parks in just two weeks. The parks we planned to visit were, the mighty five in Utah (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef), the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Great Sand Dunes. This was something we had never done before, almost the unthinkable. Two weeks in the car, with my family, discovering some of America’s most beautiful places.
This trip was one I’ll never forget. Every park we visited had its unique features that we were excited to discover at each park. We went on amazing hikes and I experienced my first ever monsoon while we were staying in Moab, Utah. We were able to be in four states at once in the four corners and we visited the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. The many pictures we took along the way document some of the most breathtaking views that we’ll remember for a lifetime.
After visiting many of America’s beautiful national parks (16 to be exact), I do have a favorite. My favorite is Zion National Park in Utah. While many people believe the Grand Canyon is the best, I have to disagree. Zion is like no other. Every hike we went on was different from each other even though we were still in the same park. We hiked to the top of peaks, through the narrows, and the best part was relaxing by the pool in 100-degree weather at the end of the day.
If you’re ever considering driving across the country to visit national parks, I say do it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you’ll cherish forever with the people you love most.