Travel writing as family history - lovely way to create memories

This article is a journal narrative and an informative first person report.

Nancy-Ann Feren writes about how her family has chronicled memories about their history, by travelling in America's National Parks.  This is creative travel and journal writing.

Published in the September/October 2019 edition of "Northern New England Journey".

417 and Counting - This family could be the National Park Service's biggest fans!

On September 9, 2017, my husband, Dick, and I visited our 417th national park site.  Saint Gaudens National Historical Park in our home state of New Hampshire. We had deliberately saved this one for last- or almost last. After practically every trip, the National Park Service has added another new location, so our goal of visiting each one is a moving target.  By the time this is published, we will have visited Camp Nelson National Monument in Kentucky*, which opened in October 2018; Honouliuli National Historic Site in Hawai'i, No. 417, at this count, is not yet open to the public.

Our quest began in 1977, when we camped at Maine's Acadia National Park with our two young sons. We fell in love with the natural beauty, the wildlife, the hiking trails- and the blueberries.  Like many young families, we didn't have a lot of money for vacations. Camping provided a viable alternative. Our children had important roles to play in this camping/travel experience.  A spirit of cooperation grew. With everyone's help, we could be totally set up with dinner cooking within 40 minutes of arriving on a site.

Our camping vacations over the next nine years took our family to 48 states and 65 sites in the National Park System. We rode the train to the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis Missouri, and went on a moonlight hike on the dunes at Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.  Our boys became junior rangers at the Grand Canyon. We made hot chocolate with hot water form a hot water "jug fountain" at Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas and enjoyed eating s'mores by countless campfires. We got a real appreciation for the life of the early pioneers. Our van was the wagon train. Our tent was the primitive cabin.

By the time our children headed off to college, Dick and I knew we wanted to continue our explorations. We downsized to a two-person tent in 1995, and drove more than 12, 000 miles round trip to Alaska. We returned in 2016, by air this time, to take bush planes to remote parks in the Alaskan wilderness, including Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, which has a caldera** formed by the collapse of a 7,000-foot volcanic mountain. Rangers told us that this is one of the hardest parks to reach; fewer than 300 people visit it in a typical year.

Travel has provided something personal to each member of our family and has challenged us to look beyond our everyday lives. Through these shared adventures, we have gained an appreciation for our nation's immensity and great diversity, while developing a special family bond. 

Nancy-Ann Feren, is a resident of Manchester, New Hampshire. Using family journals she compiled on every trip dating from the 1970's to 2018, she wrote the book, Not Your Average Travelers: 40 years of Adventures in All the U.S. National Parks.  

*Camp Nelson: In the Footsteps of Freedom: Established as a Union supply depot and hospital during the Civil War, Camp Nelson became a recruitment and training center for African American soldiers, and a refugee camp for their wives and children. Thousands of slaves risked their lives escaping to this site with the hope of securing their freedom and, ultimately, controlling their futures by aiding in the destruction of slavery.

Nancy-Ann is a retired 5th grade teacher, has a BA from Wellesley College and an MA in teaching from the University of New Hampshire. She and her husband, Dick, live in Manchester, NH where they both grew up. Nancy-Ann loves spending time with her family, baking cookies with her grandchildren, reading, walking, camping, traveling, and sharing stories about their not-so-average travel adventures including the bear perched in a tree above their tent, canoe trips through mangrove swamps, and flights in bush planes to remote parks in Alaska. 

** Caldera- a large volcanic crater, especially one formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano.

Bon Voyage writing!