Over the next few weeks, we will be posting blogs sharing some of the memorable themes from our cross country trip last summer. This overview will give you a sense of what is to come.
Ruth and Cheryl both have been interested in seeing as many National Parks as possible for years. Both have National Park sticker books, park stickers on our cars 😃 and collect the park brochures (known by the National Park Service as “Unigrids”).
Cheryl suddenly had some free time in last Spring, and decided to take a road trip to see friends and Parks. Ruth was game to join the adventure. After Cheryl spent some time with friends and family on the East Coast in April and May, she started driving west on Memorial Day, 2025. The idea was to head west, see friends and family scattered across the country, celebrate her 60th birthday by seeing 60 National Park sites, and reflect on next steps.
Leaving from Philadelphia, she visited parks in PA, NY, and OH, arriving at her brother's home in Chicago on May 31. Ruth flew to Chicago, and after a few days with family, we set out - planning to spend about two months seeing what we could.
The 60 parks, 60 days, for Cheryl’s 60th birthday - hence an epic 60-60-60 trip - ended on August 4, ending a few days earlier than planned because of rainy weather. Along the way, lots of people gave us lots of tips about things we “needed” to see, but except for our weekend in Seattle, we were almost exclusively focused on National Park Service “units” - including parks, monuments, memorials, battlefields, etc. We drove through parts of many National Forests, visited a few State Parks and preserves, and made other stops along the way - but the focus was on NPS.
We didn’t really have a plan setting out. Given cuts in NPS budgets, we had to stay flexible so we could get to places when they were open, or at least accessible. We tried to always see the video at each site, and collect the unigrid, but it wasn’t always possible. If we were able to learn something about the site and spend some time there, we counted it, even if it was after hours.
Our route by State - believe it or not - was IL, IN, MI, OH, KY, INx2, ILx2, MO, KS, MOx2, KSx2, NE, CO, WY, NEx2, WYx2, NEx3, SD, WYx3, SD, ND, MT, WYx4, MTx2, ID, WA, OR, WAx2, ORx2, CA, ORx3, NV, IDx2, UT, AZ, COx2, NM, COx3, KSx3, OK, AR, LA, AL, GA, SC, and home to FL.
By the numbers, here is a summary of our trip:
- Cheryl starts: Monday May 26 at Valley Forge
- Ruth and Cheryl arrive home after visiting Congaree NP on Monday, August 4
- Total time - 10 weeks, the joint trip was 8 weeks. - 60 days
- Distance - 18,000 miles on the car odometer - and we spent $1450 on gas.
- 29 States visited (plus MD, NJ, PA, NY, and WI from Cheryl’s first part) = 34
We visited about 120 National Park Service sites:
- 22 National Parks
- 15 National Monuments
- 10 National Battlefields and Battlefield parks
- 13 National Historic Trails
- 60 National historic sites (For these blogs, we have grouped some categories together - there were more that 12 different designations for the different NPS sites)
- Also many National forests, other BLM sites and monuments, state and county parks and other points of interest and roadside attractions.
It was fun and interesting, engaging and educational. We met lovely people everywhere we went and were consistently impressed with the dedication, knowledge, passion and creativity of the NPS rangers and volunteers we met as well as the high quality of the NPS films, museums, unigrids and other informational materials. Parks that would otherwise be fairly similar, like forts or Native American sites, focused on different aspects of the history and culture, providing greater depth of knowledge to visitors making EVERY site interesting and valuable to the American People.
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