National Parks Traveler

We accomplished our mission to visit and camp at all 59 National Parks during the NPS Centennial year, sharing our experiences and promoting the parks on switchbackkids.com. We finished our big trip in August 2016.

We're Cole and Elizabeth, 27, born and raised near St. Louis, Missouri. We met at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) where Elizabeth got a degree in education and Cole went with journalism and business. After college we moved to Kansas City, Missouri where Elizabeth got a job as a 6th grade Language Arts teacher and Cole worked at a health care IT company. And together we are the Switchback Kids! One day we were on a hike talking about bucket lists. One thing that made the list was visiting all the 59 U.S. National Parks in our lifetime. Then somehow it evolved into the crazy idea of the visiting all those parks within one year. This year of full park immersion would be full of hiking, biking, backpacking, trail cooking, kayaking and camping 6 nights a week along any other adventures that come our way. And finally we decided our best option was to take the most irresponsible and non-conventional step of our lives: press pause on our careers and take on the challenge and adventure of our lives. Carpe diem style. We don't want this trip to just be a simple year-long vacation to fulfill our wanderlust. We are striving for something much bigger. One main aspect of the trip is sharing our journey and park experiences with others through this blog and our social media. We want the story of two 26-year-olds who break from their 9-5 careers to spend a year traveling the country on a trip of their dreams to inspire others to pursue their own dreams and seek their own adventures. We also want to do our part to celebrate America's Best Idea, the National Parks, especially during the 100th anniversary year of the National Park Service. We hope our explorations of the 59 National Parks, and all other National Park Service sites we can hit along the way, will encourage others to join in the celebration and experience any of the amazing National Park sites all across the country.