It’s my pandemic-versary. One year ago we got the news that we’d start working from home, and I’ve been hanging out in a condo with two cats ever since (with occasional trips to the grocery store).
It turns out I love working at home. It’s quieter, more efficient, less stressful, and creates better work/life balance. But I wouldn’t mind traveling again, going somewhere new and taking photos. I expect it will be several months until we achieve herd immunity, but I can dream about post-pandemic vacations now!
My first thought is VEGAS!! but that only takes a few days. I want my imaginary road trip to be something epic, something to celebrate the end of a global pandemic. Like visiting national parks!
So, here’s a plan for a hypothetical post-pandemic road trip to the national parks. To keep things interesting, I’ll gamify it with some rules:
- Visit all 51 national parks in the lower 48 states. I could get my car to Alaska and Hawaii, but it seems more efficient to fly to those places, so I’ll keep it to states that share a border.
- Visit already-visited parks. Visiting Yosemite or Olympic or the big five in Utah is phenomenal every time. It doesn’t get less exciting or stunning. So if I’m doing an all-national-parks-in-the-lower-48-states road trip, then I should do the road trip.
- Drive an electric car. Fortunately, Ford has a Mustang for that! I want the orange one, but it doesn’t come out until later this year. (Waiting might be a good thing, though, since apparently the non-Tesla charging network leaves a lot to be desired.) I realize an electric vehicle will be expensive to buy (or rent?), more inconvenient, add time to the trip, and force me out of my don’t-stop, pedal-to-the-metal style of road tripping, but it probably won’t be as inconvenient as the next rule …
- Take the cats. These rescue cats have abandonment issues, and I promised to take care of them. Taking the cats creates sub-rules: stay in cats-allowed places, partition the car so cats don’t interfere with driving, and pack cat food, water, and a litter box. (Sounds like a lot. I’ll figure all that out later.) Plus, the car needs to be big enough to fit cats and cat equipment. (Again, Mustang comes through!)
- No snow. I realize national parks are beautiful and less-crowded in the winter, but I also realize my snow-survival knowledge could fill a short, mostly empty book. So I need to come up with a route that has semi-good weather during each park visit.
For the route, I started with the optimal national park road trip that data scientist Randal Olson created in 2016 for the National Park Service’s centennial. We’ve gained four national parks since 2016 (and his route doesn’t have a no-snow rule), so I came up with my own version (above). The route starts in Southern California in the spring (March or April-ish) and goes counter-clockwise. The idea is to get the Southwest done before May/June, then spend the early summer on the east coast and the rest of the summer and early fall in the north. (How I’ll get this much time off work is something I’ll have to figure out later.)
Here’s the park-visit order:
- Joshua Tree National Park
- Death Valley National Park
- Great Basin National Park
- Zion National Park
- Bryce Canyon National Park
- Grand Canyon National Park
- Capitol Reef National Park
- Arches National Park
- Canyonlands National Park
- Mesa Verde National Park
- Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
- Great Sand Dunes National Park
- Petrified Forest National Park
- Saguaro National Park
- White Sands National Park
- Guadalupe Mountains National Park
- Carlsbad Caverns National Park
- Big Bend National Park
- Hot Springs National Park
- Gateway Arch National Park
- Mammoth Cave National Park
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- Everglades National Park
- Dry Tortugas National Park
- Biscayne National Park
- Congaree National Park
- New River Gorge National Park
- Shenandoah National Park
- Acadia National Park
- Cuyahoga Valley National Park
- Indiana Dunes National Park
- Isle Royale National Park
- Voyageurs National Park
- Theodore Roosevelt National Park
- Badlands National Park
- Wind Cave National Park
- Rocky Mountain National Park
- Grand Teton National Park
- Yellowstone National Park
- Glacier National Park
- North Cascades National Park
- Mt. Rainier National Park
- Olympic National Park
- Crater Lake National Park
- Redwood National and State Parks
- Lassen Volcanic National Park
- Yosemite National Park
- King’s Canyon National Park
- Sequoia National Park
- Pinnacles National Park
- Channel Islands National Park
The trip covers 16,000 miles, includes 270 hours of driving, and hits 39 states. If I spent one day at each park, the trip would take about four months. And since I’ll likely spend more than one day at some parks, it’ll probably be more like six or seven months. So right now I’m aiming (in my imagination) for the beginning of April (let’s say Easter-ish) to the beginning of October (let’s say Janene’s birthday-ish).
This trip won’t happen any time soon, but it could happen some day! The next step is to find out if it’s possible (matching the route with EV charging stations, asking if there’s a sabbatical program at work, finding cat-friendly lodging, etc.). In the meantime, I hope you are doing sort of okay and staying safe out there. The last 12 months have been a lot, and if your accomplishment today was moving from bed to couch, you’re doing great.