93-year-old visited every national park and healed a family rift (NPR)

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Carla618

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Excerpt:

That's when Joy remembers receiving a call from Brad. He "wanted to know if I wanted to go down to the Smoky Mountains and stay in a tent," she says. "And I said, 'Yes, I'll try it.' I'd never been in one before."

Brad saw it as a chance to right himself. "There are a lot of things I've gotten wrong in my life," he says. "The best thing I ever did was to call her that day."

Grandma Joy was 85 at the time. She'd never even seen a mountain before. But she and Brad set out to summit one of the park's peaks along the Alum Cave Trail. It was two and a half miles to the top.

"She was very, very wobbly," Brad says. "Her balance and coordination were very poor." But when she finally reached the top, she says with a laugh, "There was this big group of college kids and they all gave me a rousing cheer!"

Joy and Brad were hooked. They visited one national park after another, and Joy kept getting stronger.

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That’s a great story. That would be my mom... Grandma Joi... but she passed almost twenty years ago. She’d be 91 in July. My folks took a couple grandkids to Alaska the year before. That was a great thing that grandson did!
 
That’s a great story. That would be my mom... Grandma Joi... but she passed almost twenty years ago. She’d be 91 in July. My folks took a couple grandkids to Alaska the year before. That was a great thing that grandson did!
Ben,

Click on the Instagram link. The photos are great.
 
I recently finished an audiobook (on Audible.com) where the writer visited every national park in the United States in a van called Gizmo. Except not in the van for the Alaska and Hawaii parks. It was called Feral: Losing Myself and Finding My Way in America’s National Parks by Emily Pennington.

It is the second Nomad/VanLife book I've read/listened to where the writer's relationship with her partner fails while pursuing the nomad lifestyle. (The first one was Nowhere for Very Long: The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life By: Brianna Madia).

Maybe a similar goal could be to visit every national forest. I think that national forests have more free bookdocking opportunities.
 
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