National Parks Restored our Souls
In 2018, on a whim, my husband suggested we take the kids to visit Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks for the weekend. We had never been to these beauties but had recently moved to Central California and these parks were just down the road. While checking out the visitor’s center, we came across a stamp book that encouraged visitors to collect stamps from each of the parks. Being a lover of checklists and bucket lists, I knew this book would challenge our family to visit them all! We decided to set a goal to hit them all before our kids (ages 8,6, and 4 at the time) graduate high school. After this visit, we had our first two stamps!
Fast forward to Summer 2020. Our book had 11 stamps and we were off to get our last park in California…Channel Islands. COVID had caused us to cancel a few prior trips but we were ready for this epic spot! After saving up his money, my oldest son had just purchased his own camera and was excited to use it for the first time. The boat ride to the island was such a thrill for our family. Other passengers and rangers commented on our kids’ ranger hats, filled with Junior Ranger Badges from our previous parks. We spent the day on the island and had never seen so many birds in our lives! The sole ranger was so kind and helpful and gave our family a private Ranger Talk while our kids diligently worked on their Junior Ranger booklets. We hiked around and our kids recorded their own Ranger talks about the flowers and plants with my son’s new camera! We spent a full three hours in one spot, just overlooking the beautiful water and eating a picnic lunch. We even met a ranger visiting from Alaska who shared her experience about working at the Alaska National Parks. We made notes for when our travels take us that way.
As the day came to a close and we headed back to the boat, our feet were tired but our hearts were full. We had spent months in quarantine and this was our first park back…and what a park it was! To make it even more magical, a large pod of dolphins swam beside our boat for the last fifteen minutes back to the land. We still have all of these videos and watch them from time to time as we recognize the value of that first trip back into civilization. We needed that trip. We needed a sense of normalcy again. We needed to know that COVID had robbed so much from so many…but that the National Parks could heal some of that for us. Getting outdoors, seeing the beauty, and meeting like-minded folks who want to explore all that our country has to offer can restore a soul like no other! Our souls were restored that day…we even have the Junior Ranger badges to prove it!