I’m not one to simply serve up stories from other sources and to republish them here, but this article on our National Park system caught my attention. I love our National Parks. I really, really agree that they are our best idea – I only wish I had more time to visit more of them, more often.
Twenty years ago today, I took a Friday night flight from Newark to Las Vegas for the start of a week-long vacation – rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The time spent that week ranks as my most favorite trip; it was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I wish I could do it again. The photos we took that week capture the memories not only of a vacation, but of a time in my life when I was much less unencumbered and bound by work and family. The group of friends with whom I shared the trip have been long gone from my life for nearly 17 years, but I wonder if they reminisce about that trip and the time we spent camping along the banks of the river, the arrival at Phantom Ranch, sleeping in the bunkhouses and the long trek up the Bright Angel Trail to the Canyon’s South Rim.
Many years after the Grand Canyon, Edith and I vacationed at Acadia and the Outer Banks; we honeymooned in Hawaii and witnessed the sunrise over Haleakala, but there are so many more National Parks I long to discover: Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Glacier, the Badlands, the Great Smoky Mountains. Someday, I will get to them all; someday.
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