Bill Leslie: Great National Park Adventure
How many national parks have you visited? Do you realize we now have 60 of them?
North Carolina lays claim to one of the finest – Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee. It is a glorious place to visit in October.
Years ago, the Leslie family made it our goal to visit every national park in America. I don’t think there is a better vacation. The fresh air. The hiking. Majestic mountains. Roaring rivers. We can’t get enough of that good stuff.
We collect a patch at each national park we visit. In our recent trip to the Pacific Northwest, we bagged patches and stunning scenery at Mount Rainier in Washington and Crater Lake.
Today I am posting a new music video of some of that recent scenery we enjoyed out west.
Our biggest haul of national park patches came in Utah. In two trips, we explored what Utah calls The Mighty Five: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion. It helped to have relatively cheap flights to Las Vegas where we rented a car for our adventures in Utah.
Our overall family favorite is probably Olympic National Park in Washington. WRAL Meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner helped us plan this amazing trip as we celebrated high school and college graduations for our children.
Yosemite, Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon also rank among our top choices.
I have a special place where I keep our national park patches. Our plan is to stitch the patches into a wall quilt of the United States.
Today I did inventory. We have collected 23 US national park patches so far. I thought we were doing pretty well until I saw the latest list of national parks.
Yes, we are now up to 60 national parks.
I may be retired but I have a lot of work to do!
