Traveling man

I got to thinking about raising my son and the cool places we’ll visit. I’ve been very blessed with growing up in a family that loved to travel. And now, I’ll get to show Alex all the places I’ve been to, and hopefully more. There are a whole bunch of National Parks I still want to visit.  (And I’m in the early stages of planning a trip to visit every baseball stadium in America and watch games – that’s about 10 years away, though).

But I’m also excited to go camping and fishing again at places I visited as a kid. I sat down and listed all the places I can remember visiting and then mapped them out using Wayfaring. I stuck with National Parks & Monuments for this particular list. I came up with 28 places. Although that’s a little misleading because 4 of them are in New York City and 6 are in Washington DC. Both of which I’ve visted on numerous occasions. But, since they are Nationally recognized and get their own homepage, I’m counting them.

Here is my Wayfaring Map.

I noticed there’s a distinct void of places in the mid-south. Did you know the Alamo is not a National monument? But I’ve been there and over to New Orleans, too. However, they don’t count in this exercise since they’re not National status.

My list includes the following. First, National Parks in alphabetical order:

• Badlands National Park
  Southwestern, SD
• Denali National Park & Preserve
  Denali Park, AK
• Fire Island National Seashore
  Patchogue, NY
• Grand Canyon National Park
  Grand Canyon, AZ
• Grand Teton National Park
  Moose, WY
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
  Tennessee and North Carolina, NC,TN
• Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
  Porter, IN
• Katmai National Park & Preserve
  King Salmon, AK
• Kenai Fjords National Park
  Seward, AK
• Mesa Verde National Park
  Cortez and Mancos, CO
• Shenandoah National Park
  the Blue Ridge Mountains near Luray, VA
• Yellowstone National Park
  Yellowstone National Park, ID,MT,WY
• Yosemite National Park
  the Sierra Nevada, CA

National Monuments and Memorials:

• Alcatraz Island
  San Francisco, CA
• Castle Clinton National Monument
  New York, NY
• Ellis Island National Monument
  NJ,NY
• Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site
  Washington D.C., DC
• General Grant National Memorial
  New York, NY
• Gettysburg National Military Park
  Gettysburg, PA
• Golden Gate National Recreation Area
  San Francisco, CA
• Korean War Veterans Memorial
  Washington, DC
• Lincoln Memorial
  Washington, DC
• Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
  Crow Agency, MT
• Mount Rushmore National Memorial
  Keystone, SD
• National Mall
  Washington D.C., DC
• Statue Of Liberty National Monument
  NY
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial
  Washington, DC
• Washington Monument
  Washington, DC

I’m sure my family will correct me if I’ve made any mistakes.

Also, unfortuantely, Wayfaring organizes the waypoints in order that you put them down on the map, not alphabetically. Oh well. Still fun to look at.

I realized this is my last post of 2006. Happy New Year everyone. See you again next year.