FAQ’s

Why National Parks?

Rob grew up in Port Angeles, WA, the gateway to Olympic National Park, and I (Kristin) have always been drawn to wild places. When we met and started dating, some of our most memorable adventures were in National Parks, from Glacier, Yosemite, and Acadia, to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons once we had Hudson. We love adventuring in the parks and wanted our kids to experience those same wild places while they’re young.

Don’t get me wrong, we love a good theme park and our kids have been to Disneyland, but the funny thing… even when we took them to Disneyland, they just wanted to play at the Redwood Creek area, sliding down rocks, climbing ropes, and exploring caves. I’ve observed that when kids are exposed to wild places and have a positive experience, they continue to seek them out.

How much does a trip like this cost?

In all honesty, we don’t know yet. We’ve been saving up for the past few years and have focused on getting creative with income-generation strategies to help us earn and save more both now and while we’re traveling: renting out our home, renting our car (yep, this is possible) and continuing part-time remote work since both of us have our own businesses.

Why take your kids at such a young age? What if they won’t remember it?

We love this question, because there are many reasons. We’ll start off with this:

Why not? This isn’t our first family adventure, and won’t be the last. We want to show our kids what’s possible at a young age and remind them the limitations in front of us aren’t always real. With hard work, optimism and the right support network, anything is possible.

Is this your first big family adventure?

In 2017, we hiked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago with our then 1-year old son, Hudson. We returned two years later with both of our kids, Hudson (age 3) and Kalea (1) and hiked the 150-mile Camino Portuguese route. We share our experiences at www.tinyshellcamino.com to inspire other families to consider taking their kids on this journey, make it a family adventure, to at least try! It’s been one of the most defining experiences for our family.

Rob has also completed several of the “World’s Toughest” races and the kids and I have been present, cheering him on, at each event:

Race Across America, “World’s Toughest Bicycle Race” (2016)
Badwater 146, “World’s Toughest Foot Race” (2017)
Uberman, “World’s Toughest Ultra-Triathlon” (2020)

Do you know of anyone else who has visited all of the parks?

Yes! We continue to learn of more people currently on a mission to visit all 63 and some who have visited all of the parks when there were only 59 or 61.

Here are some of the travelers who continue to be an inspiration to us! Look them up and you’ll see they have incredible stories, photos and memories to share:

Are you only traveling in the summertime? What about the off-season?

Now that both kids are in elementary school, we focus our park trips around school breaks. We visit warm climate parks during Spring Break. Thankfully, Rob’s teaching job gives us the freedom (and health insurance) to road trip for 4-6 weeks to visit more hard-to-reach parks in the summer months. We’ve also taken long-weekend excursions to parks within the Pacific Northwest during the off-season.

Is there a cause you’re promoting?

We believe kids need time in nature. They need to be outside. This trip is an embodiment of that. We want to take our kids to wild places outside their comfort zone (and sometimes, ours). We want our kids to discover how strong and resilient they are. We want them to feel at home in nature, safe and secure, yet willing to take risks. We want them to know they can do hard things, that the world is open to them.

We are always learning of organizations committed to getting kids outdoors, so if you know of others, please send them our way! These are a few of our favorites:

How did you select the parks you’ll save for last?

As of 2025, we have visited 52/63 parks. We are saving the 8 parks in Alaska because they are expensive to get to (we need to save up for it). Those parks also require lots of detailed advance planning & logistics. For instance, only 3 parks in Alaska are accessible by road and the remaining 5 can only be accessed by sea plane.

Here is our plan to visit the remaining parks:

Virgin Islands National Park (Spring 2025)
Denali, Kenai Fjords and Wrangell St. Elias (Summer 2025)
National Park of American Samoa (Spring/ Early Summer 2026)
Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, Katmai, Kobuk Valley (Summer 2026)
Acadia (Fall 2026) – our last park! Also the first park we visited as a family when I was pregnant with Hudson.

Do you have a favorite National Park?

We get asked this question all the time. We have favorite parks for different reasons, but we can agree our top five list (in alphabetical order, not necessarily in order of rank) are:

Big Bend National Park
Glacier National Park
Olympic National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Yosemite National Park

Bonus Favorite: Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Visit at sunset for a chance to see hundreds of buffalo roam the plains. We were fortunate to also see wild turkey, wild horses, foxes, impala and groundhogs.

If your family had a motto to live by, what would it be?

“Go where you feel the most alive”