The first National Park I visited was Acadia (above), when I was a teen, and my ears always perk up whenever I hear people talk about their trips to National Parks. My Dad loved history, and he would tell me stories of historic sites. My Grandfather loved nature, and he would tell me stories about nature. Many times, when traveling overseas, people would ask me about America, and I would have to admit that I had never traveled to some of our most beautiful places. Now that I have time to travel, I decided I should see the best of America and share my experiences.

Trying to get organized, I joined the National Parks Travelers Club, also known as ParkStamps.Org. There, I learned about the nine regions, what counts as an official park visit, what other types of parks managed by the National Park Service, and more. Including the 63 official National Parks, there are currently 430 national park units, preserves, rivers, recreation areas, shores, historic sites, monuments and memorials. There are also special heritage areas, affiliated areas and trails, which don’t count in the official total.

Once you get started tracking which sites you have visited, you feel like completing more. But because of the climate crisis, I decided not to count sites that I visited in carbon burning vehicles. Instead, I am seeing as many as I can in a zero emission vehicle: 381 by last count, including all parks in the DC, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions.  

What a waste to travel to see beautiful natural places and interesting historic sites, if your mode of travel contributes to their destruction via fire, flood or storms? Can you honestly say you love those places? We need to think about our impact on the world and change our behavior now. Electric vehicles work well enough today to get to most, if not all parks. If you care enough about our national parks, you will visit them without burning carbon.