KE1TH

I have posted almost 500 pics of my single trip to see most of the National Parks in the USA.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3081623...708982/detail/

You do not have to join flickr to view the pics. There are 27 pages, just hit "next" to get to the next page.

Included are: Mount Rushmore, Badlands, Devils Tower, Little Bighorn, Beartooth Hwy, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Capulin Volcano, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of Gunnison, Colorado, Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion, North Rim Grand Canyon, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, and Yosemite. Also, pics of San Francisco and Pacific Coast.

This trip took seven weeks and I put almost 15K miles on the car. I was alone for most of the trip. I had a friend join me once I got to Las Vegas, the last two weeks of the trip.

It was a labor of love putting them online and getting them labeled.

Keith

utahtea

WOW...thanks for sharing.

Utahtea

Myer

Wow!!! That was some trip.

How do you separate in your mind everything you saw?

Great photos. Thanks for sharing.

LindainOhio

How lucky you are to get 7 weeks to travel. I keep telling my husband that a road trip visiting the National Parks out west is one of my many dream trips.

Growing up, my family did the trip several times (the last time with 7 children). Were my parents absolutely crazy? As a result though, my parents infected all their offspring with a great desire to travel.

I remember another adult telling my dad that if he enjoyed our month long trip out west (camping and never once eating at a restaurant--not even McDonald's), he would truly enjoy World War III.

Did you camp?

maj

What a great trip! Thanks so much for posting the pictures. We've been to most of those places, but it has been 10 years for some, and it was so much fun for me to relive those areas through your pictures. When did you go?

KE1TH

Trip was several years ago, but the pics were on film/paper, so I am spending HOURS scanning them to digital so I can (1)save them to DVD and (2) share them. I now have a digital camera that uploads directly to my PC, but these older pics from vacations past are being scanned so that I can save them as well. Even digitized my vhs film (that was actually easier, put the vhs tape in the machine, add a blank dvd and push a button and voila')

I didn't camp. I stayed at motels like Motel 6, Super 8, Days Inn and some local family owned places. Except for Vegas where I stayed at the Luxor. I didn't have a schedule and just went where I wanted to go next....

By the pictures, you can tell that I started out in St Louis, went north through South Dakota, then west through Wyoming and Montana to Yellowstone, then southeast through Wyoming to Colorado to New Mexico, turned around and went north to Colorado, west to Utah, southwest to Nevada, west to California, north through California to San Francisco, the south to San Diego, then east on I8/I10 all the way home to Alabama.

Keith

Barblab

Great trip, great pictures, thanks for posting here. This collection should be required viewing for anyone trying to decide which National Park(s) to visit next. So fun to see them all in one place. Again, thanks.

siena1

Wow, wow, and wow. Your pictures are further proof that I need to learn more about photography!

I'm sure scanning the pictures is a huge undertaking. I've been wondering if I should digitize pics from years past.

Thanks for sharing!

DebitNM

Great pics! I swear I can see my house in one of the pictures taken at Mesa Verde NP! You were in my neighborhood, glad you had such a wonderful trip.

Deb

AdamT

Great photos ke1th. how did you organize your trip? was it an all-out blitz of all the parks you could get to, or were you focused on a certain thing (climbing, wildlife, etc)?

by the way that van with the tank treads is incredible. should be a national monument all its own...

KE1TH

Adam,

The trip was basically an all-out blitz to visit as many parks as I could.... I actually had planned on going to Glacier National Park in Montana, but ended up going south out of Yellowstone and just continued in that direction.

I had the "Fodor's Vacation Planner: National Parks of the West" along with several state published guides.

I also had the brochures put out by the major motels to see what town had available sites to plan my day with: ie: just before leaving Rapid City heading west, I looked and saw that Billings, MT was the next biggest town down the road, so I booked a room there and that's how/where I planned that days adventure.

I miscalculated the distance several times and ended up driving well into the night to get somewhere, but usually was pretty spot-on in my time calculations.

As for focus, I enjoying hiking, so any park that had a well known hike, I took advantage of the opportunity.... I really enjoyed the Virgin Narrows hike in Zion and the Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch hikes in Arches. There were no bad hikes on this trip. All were enjoyable.

BTW: the most "dumb" thing I did on this trip was to take my sedan and drive on a rutted road north of Rock Springs, WY to the "Boars Tusk" and "White Mountain Petroglyphs".... this "road" was a dust trail used by 4XD trucks and here I go in my GrandAm..... I'm on this road, literally out in the middle of nowhere without seeing another human for hours... if I had bottomed out, had a flat... any car trouble at all... I would have been screwed..... but luckily I didn't and had one of the highlights of the trip....

Keith

Devonmcj

I enjoyed looking at your photos. Thanks for posting them. We'll probably never have the time to do an epic road trip like yours, but we're seeing a lot of the western parks in dribs and drabs. My brother and his wife are on a cross-country motorcycle trip right now. They left Maryland in April and are now in Texas. We plan to meet up with them in Yellowstone in June and then they'll continue on to Alaska. It's been fun following their adventure on their blog.