The Peek's Grand Tour of America

#45 Gateway Arch National Park, St Louis, MO
Who knew the arch was a national park? This is the final trip in our camper. We skipped 4 parks due to weather/planning and 12 that are located outside of the contiguous US. We will make plans to visit those in the next couple of years.

#44 Mammoth Caves National Park in Kentucky
We only toured the caves so not many pics. Fat Man’s Misery was a narrow section in the walkway🤣

#43 New River Gorge National Park in Fayetteville, WV
This is the newest national park, established in 2020. The bridge is massive and shaved 45 minutes off of crossing the river. We also toured ghost coal mining towns.

The best part of South Carolina was the RV park/compound/attraction, South of the Border🤣😂

#42 Shenandoah National Park in Virginia
I’m sure this park is much more beautiful in the late spring/summer, but all the foliage was ugly brown during our visit.

#41 Congaree National Park in South Carolina

We had our first flat tire today, but Aaron was quick at swapping it out with one of our spares.

#40 Great Smoky Mountain National Park in western NC and eastern TN. I’m sure this park is much more beautiful in the spring and summer, when the trees have green leaves. The “smoke” is really fog.

#38 Everglades and #39 Biscayne National Parks. Aaron hated Florida, the heat, humidity, and traffic. I disliked the mosquitos, all 40+ species found me. Our next stop is Atlanta!

I can’t believe we’ve been on our national park adventure for 6 months! We expect to be back in KC for good around the end of March.

-37 national parks
-21 states
-20,746 miles driven
-42 RV Parks and 1 Cracker Barrel parking lot
-14 pay phones spotted
-$3.04 & $7.40 least and most paid per gallon of premium gas. Costco in San Antonio had the cheapest!

#37 Hot Springs National Park in Hot Springs, AR
We enjoyed a traditional bath package at 100+ year old Buckstaff Bath house. It included a soak in a large bathtub, a steam sauna in a metal cabinet, butt soak in a sitz tub and resting on a table with hot and cold packs.

We had fun in Texas visit family and friends. While Aaron didn’t get to fulfill his lifelong dream of hanging out with Chip Gaines, he did get to visit the Silos and eat at Magnolia Table.

#36 Big Bend National Park in very western Texas, on the Mexican border. The weather was perfect.

#34 Guadalupe Mountains NP - the wind followed us from eastern NM

#35 Carlsbad Caverns NP - self guided tour of the largest accessible cave chamber in North America. We forgot to get a pic with the entrance sign.

Both parks are in south east New Mexico. Carlsbad cavern has a viewing area to watch hubdreds of thousands of bats leave the cave for their evening/morning feeding, this is only during the summer as they migrate south in the winter.

Someone asked where we keep our cat’s litter box in our camper. We have a pantry with a cat shaped cutout 🐱. The cat also has a motion light so he’s not in the dark when he’s taking care of his business.

#33 White Sands National Park was our first park since Christmas break. Less wind would’ve made it more enjoyable.

#32 Saguaro National Park in Tucson, AZ. They are full of personality.

#31 Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua trees are funky looking plants related to yuccas. We completely forgot to visit the site of Gram Parson’s cremation 😞

#30 Channel Island-Santa Cruz
It’s also known as North America's Galapagos. The island doesn’t have trash cans and only has vault toilets. We saw island foxes and dolphins 🐬 🦊

#29 Pinnacles National Park

#28 Yosemite National Park
It was cold, wet, and foggy during our visit, Aaron called it sloppy snow.
I’m sure it’s a beautiful park but we didn’t pack snow boots so we didn’t hike 😞 and we couldn’t see much through the fog.

#26 Kings Caynon and #27 Sequoia
The parks share an entrance and they both have giant sequoia trees, not sure why they are 2 separate parks.

#25 Death Valley ☠️
some of the campgrounds don’t open until October bc it’s too hot in the summer. The high in mid November was 77.

We had to stop by Vegas to visit Meow Wolf Omega Mart, now we’ve been to all 3!
We also went to Hoover Dam and did the dam tour😁

#24 Petrified Forest National Park

We spent the weekend in Albuquerque to visit petroglyph national monument and Meow Wolf Santa Fe

#23 Mesa Verde National Park

It’s been 3 months since we started our national park adventure, here’s how we’re doing🤣

-22 national parks
-12 states
-12,300 miles driven
-23 RV Parks and 1 Cracker Barrel parking lot
-8 pay phones spotted
-$3.84 & $7.40 least and most paid per gallon of premium gas

#22 Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, not our favorite NP

#21 Arches National Park