Our Site

Welcome to KTNP Blog! KT stands for Kristin and Travis, who are the authors of this blog. Our site will chronicle our adventures in and around national parks in the US and abroad; NP stands for national parks. Our goal is to visit all 62 US national parks together, at our own pace. We like to explore the most interesting, and often remote, parts of each park. Our blog will be a place to share what we find, what we liked, what worked (or didn’t), and share plenty of photos of our adventures. We’re not affiliated with anything we’re blogging about. We’d love to hear from you! If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at ktnpblog@gmail.com.

Photography

If you’re interested in using any of the photos on this blog, please contact us. I’d like to think that our photos get better the longer we do this.

About Us

We met in October of 2014. Shortly after we met, we started hiking together. Our first hike together was in Great Falls Park, soon followed by hikes in Shenandoah National Park. In the spring, we started car camping, which soon escalated into an interest in backpacking and buying hundreds of dollars worth of outdoor gear. In August 2015, Travis proposed in the Dolly Sods on a backpacking trip we had planned to view the Perseids meteor shower. We were married in April 2016.

We live in Northern Virginia, so we consider Shenandoah to be our “home park.” Being so close to the city has its benefits, but we love getting out and exploring nature. We both also love the variety of great food in the DC area (or wherever we are), so we’ll talk about that too when it’s relevant.

Kristin’s favorite parks so far: Arches and Crater Lake
Kristin’s bucket list: Mesa Verde, Grand Teton, Joshua Tree, Isle Royale, Glacier Bay, and American Samoa

Travis’s favorite parks so far: Canyonlands, Redwood, and Glacier
Travis’s bucket list: Katmai, Glacier Bay, Channel Islands, Haleakalā, Mesa Verde, and Olympic

Feel free to explore our site and leave a comment or recommendation. Thanks for visiting!

FAQ

Why does the progress bar say you’ve been to X out of 62 national parks? Aren’t there 63?

We focus on backpacking and hiking, so we don’t include Gateway Arch in the count (it doesn’t have either).

It seems like your hike took a long time. Why is that?

The time we post is how long it took us to personally hike the trail. It factors in the time we take photos for the blog so it might take us a bit longer. We like to take our time and see everything there is to see – plants, animals, views, etc.

Your blog says you’ve been to 14 parks – why aren’t there posts for all of them?

We didn’t start blogging until after our visit to Acadia. In order, we have visited: Shenandoah, Mammoth Cave, Dry Tortugas, Everglades, Biscayne, Acadia, Saguaro, Redwood, Crater Lake, Arches, Canyonlands, Glacier, Cuyahoga Valley, and Indiana Dunes National Parks. Internationally, we have also visited Waterton Lakes National Park and several national parks in Japan. For the parks we didn’t blog about, some we’re working on, and some we plan to revisit first. It also takes us some time to write posts. This is a hobby, so we get to it when we are able.