Two weeks, 4,000 miles, and four national parks later, the Mackenthuns have returned home with our camper, no worse for the wear.
Loading the kids up and spending time exploring Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks was something my wife and I talked about doing from the time our kids were in diapers. Our July-into-August trip also visited Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks.
To finally complete the long-awaited trip was fantastic.
I have to give my wife Jackie all the credit for doing the planning, logistics, and packing. She had us on a schedule for things to see and do, with campgrounds booked six months in advance.
With the battle over public lands again in the national consciousness due to skirmishes over National Forest roadless rules, shrinking size and protections around National Monuments in Utah, and mining adjacent the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the timing of our trip seemed appropriate. There couldn’t be a better time to go and see these beautiful places that someone before you thought enough of to protect and hold for future generations.
Our family visited four national parks that embody the unique landscape features and biota of the American West with the assistance of the “Every Kid Outdoors” program for 4th graders. We were granted admission to all the parks, and the staff working the entrance gates typically had a good question for my fourth-grade daughter Cora. She was asked what wildlife she had seen on the drive to the park, what her favorite class was, and if she was ready to return to school.
We looked forward to this trip for many years, but most keenly in the past year. Part of the joy of taking a trip, a friend once explained to me, was that you had the anticipation for the trip itself, then you had the fun of going on the trip, and lastly finished with all the wonderful memories of a great time. This trip met that high threshold, being that we had an excellent time during our trip, enjoyed the anticipation of planning in the prologue, and look back fondly at pictures and memories as a sort of epilogue.
Yellowstone was incredible, seeing wildlife and geothermal features that are quite literally like nothing else on Earth. Glacier had hikes and views that took your breath away. The Badlands set the tone for a great trip. Theodore Roosevelt National Park put a nice bow on our fortnight tour, with the newly opened Theodore Roosevelt Presidential library being a stop that exceeded expectations.
Our national parks are incredible and are a birthright to American citizens, worthy of protection. So too are our other collections of public lands, open to any man, woman, or child regardless of status or title.
As the fishing addict in our family, I was pleased with the quality of angling experiences inside and just beyond the boundaries of Yellowstone. Despite hoot owl hours (restrictions that limit fishing to mornings so that the hottest water temperatures that stress trout in the afternoon and evening are avoided) in place across the park, with an early start and some time hiking in, I was able to find a few times and places to get away and catch a variety of trout species, highlighted by captures of both Yellowstone cutthroat and Snake River Fine Spotted cutthroat trout.
I could go on for pages and pages on the awesome experience our family had out west, but instead I’ll leave you with the words of Theodore Roosevelt himself, the man who did more for conserving these treasures than any American President. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon in 1903, he shared these thoughts:
“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is, in kind, absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it, in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is…Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see. We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children’s children will get the benefit of it.”