Years ago I stumbled upon this article, in which the author described the most efficient road trip to visit all of the National Parks in the lower-48 states. That’s 50 parks in total. The idea of this ultimate road trip has stuck with me ever since, and I find myself thinking about it a couple of times a week.
Throughout the 1990s, we were car camping kids, for sure. Always on a budget, the Francisco Family would take 5- or 6-night car camping vacations into San Bernardino National Forest every summer. We certainly weren’t in the social bracket for Disney Cruises or European tours. This probably set the foundation for my life’s feelings about travel and the outdoors.
Flash forward to my first year of college and the first National Park I ever visited. I was 18 years old. I was invited with a dozen other young people to a timeshare in Mammoth, California. It was the kind of trip where we (allegedly) brought hundreds of beers, a dive-bar's-worth of assorted spirits, and potentially illicit drugs and engaged in hooliganism and debauchery until dawn every night that week. But a wintery day trip to Yosemite changed my life forever. I may have been stoned, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and wearing Converse Chuck Taylors (high-tops, of course) for the 6-mile hike to a frozen Nevada Falls, but that day left a lasting impression.
I’ve managed to visit 10 more National Parks since that day, and the previously-mentioned optimized road trip is still an unobtainable pipe dream. But planning a hypothetical road trip never hurt anybody, right?
Trusting that the map in the article is accurate and efficient, I made this spreadsheet. Here's part of it. I started in my current city, and imputed the route, drive distance, drive time, and made rough estimations of the journey.
When I made the spreadsheet, three beers into a Sunday evening, I decided somewhat arbitrarily that I wanted to visit all 50 of the National Parks in 1 year, I wanted to travel there by car, and I didn’t want to drive more than 8 hours a day.
After an hour on Google Maps, I’ve concluded we’re looking at 15,497 miles of driving over at least 262 hours.
Much to my surprise though, only 11 times was a National Park on this route further than 8 hours drive from another National Park on the route.
So some quick maths:
(50 National Parks to travel to)
+ (11 instances of more than 8 hours of driving)
61 days in our hypothetical one-year road trip dedicated to driving.
(365 days in a year)
- (61 travel days)
304 days for activities
(304 days for activities) / (50 National Parks) = 6 days of activities at each National Park.
When I saw this, my jaw dropped. Six days at any National Park sounds like a dream. In many cases, this would be enough to check out some of the most stunning landscapes at every park.
And even if the time allotted for the trip was 6 months, you’ve still got 2-3 days at each Park. That’s far more time than I’ve spent at some of the National Parks I’ve claimed to love.
On the subject of full-time travel:
I think that I’ll dedicate some thought and time to writing about the fad of full-time travel among (mostly) young people. (Aside: am I still “young people?”) But I’ve had the thought and dream often. While backpacking in the summer of 2013, I met a man who claimed to have hiked the Appalachian Trail 16 consecutive times. He had a rental property in Boston that he bought after 4 years of endless hours in the nuclear waste business. When I showed the slightest interest, he suggested working at bars in the winter and hiking each spring/summer. I started that path by becoming a server at a local spot in rural Virginia, but I didn’t have the chops for saving money.
After getting a nice little tax return, I once spent a day looking at one-way flights to London and flirted with the idea of working a summer in Europe. Again, the idea was to work every winter and travel every summer.
And it seems that every spring, the YouTube algorithm knows to push me van life videos with those clickbaity titles we’ve all seen. “Ultimate Van Life Tour,” “How I Make $4000 a month living in a van,” “Full Van Conversion with NO EXPERIENCE,” “Living in my Van To Save Money.”
I have to admit, I’m a sucker for this shit. Every year I get big dreams, cruise RVTrader, ponder the feasibility, and talk about it incessantly to my patient and supportive girlfriend.
Is a steady rental property all it takes? I say “all it takes” knowing damn well I’m not going to be in a position to buy property any time soon. But everything I’ve ever read suggests that once you’re on the road, the hashtag van life is a lot more economical than living in The Matrix with the rest of American society.
So this summer, a plan is in motion. The first steps toward property management and dreams of full-time travel are on the horizon. Hold me accountable, and I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for letting me Overshare.
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