After our trip to Maine and Acadia National Park, Laura and I started talking about all of the national parks that we had visited and tried making a list. We knew we had left out quite a few, but the list we came up with was still impressive. Since I was kayaking in Congaree National Park yesterday, I decided to make a more thorough list.
I had to be very specific. I only included true national parks, and not national monuments, national historic parks, national seashores, national forests, or anything like that. There’s just too many of them. I also didn’t include Lucayan National Park in the Bahamas or Pinacate National Park in Mexico. Here’s the list…
- North Cascades – WA
- Olympic – WA
- Yosemite – CA
- Kings Canyon – CA
- Sequoia – CA
- Joshua Tree – CA
- Grand Canyon – AZ
- Petrified Forest – AZ
- *Saguaro – AZ
- Yellowstone – WY
- Rocky Mountain – CO
- *Black Canyon of the Gunnison – CO
- Mesa Verde – CO
- Wind Cave – SD
- Badlands – SD
- Acadia – ME
- Mammoth Cave – KY
- Great Smoky Mountains – TN & NC
- Everglades – FL
- Shenendoah – VA
That makes a total of 21 national parks visited. Those in the list above marked with * were only national monuments when we visited them, and have only recently become national parks. I don’t know if I should count them, but if you’ve been there, you’ve been there, so why not?
There are many more I’d like to visit – Glacier, Carlsbad, Crater Lake, Grand Tetons, and Denali, to name a few – and many of these listed above that I’d like to visit again. Despite crowds and frustration, these are special places, and I feel privileged to have visited them.