National Park Photography and Travel Tips
 
 

There are over 9,000 miles of trail in the National Parks. Why not try to hike them all?

 
 
Rhododendron-Sky.jpg
 

Shop for Prints

Visit our Online Shop

 

 
website_Flat Orange 1500x1000.png
 

Recent Adventures

 

 We recently started a YouTube channel to capture life on the trail. We’re in the middle of our fourth season which follows the 70 days we spent living out our Toyota 4Runner in the summer of 2023. Our travels ranged from the north rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona to Olympic National Park in Washington and loads more. We’d love to hear from you here or over on You Tube!

 
Kelly and Michelle Cannon Beach.JPG
 
 

We are Kelly and Michelle vanDellen, part-time road trippers, full-time park lovers. Awhile back, we got the idea to hike every mile of every trail in every (US) National Park. It’s a 25 year-long adventure that will take us to 28 states, 2 territories, and over 9,000 miles of trail. You can keep up with our progress and read about our favorite hikes on our park pages. You can support our adventures by purchasing prints. Got a question? Fill out the form below and we’ll answer it in our FAQ.

 
 
website_Flat Orange 1500x500.png
 

Quick Questions

How do you find so much time to adventure?

Technically speaking, we have full-time jobs, but truth be told, we live a strange life. Kelly is self-employed and a big part of his job is taking photos and videos. His favorite subjects are wildlife, landscape, and nature details, making visits to National Parks an essential part of his work. Michelle is a professor and takes her work with us on the road. Combined, this gives us a lot of flexibility for long road-trips in the summer, and sometimes creative trips in other seasons. We add a lot of travel around conferences for Michelle’s job, for instance, going early or staying late to visit parks near cities where conferences are located. During winter and on rainy weekends, you can often find us working ahead to free up time for adventuring in better weather.

Aren’t you afraid of bears?

We used to be. The first time we saw a bear, we took off running for our car. This is not what you are supposed to do. Now we have seen so many bears that we look forward to it. We have seen bears on the trail in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, and Wyoming with a total count of 102, including both black and grizzly bears. We carry bear spray when we are hiking in areas with grizzly bears, but otherwise the best precaution for bears is just being alert and remaining calm.

Where do you sleep?

We sleep everywhere—hotels, AirBnB’s, friends and family members’ houses, and tents. After spending so much time on the road, we decided we needed a better travel system and in 2020, we added a Roofnest tent to our gear collection. We purchased the Sparrow Eye because it allows us to keep our bedding in the closed tent top while we travel. The tent secures to a roof rack on our Subaru Forester, takes less than a minute to fully set up, and has a memory foam mattress. We have spent about 200 nights in it and we love it.

But why?

We get asked a lot about why we would ever want to hike every trail in every park. The most obvious is because it’s there. Other reasons include that you never know where you will find beauty and that hiking all of the miles in a park really lets you see how the natural systems work together in a region. For us, loving a park is knowing a park, and knowing a park is hiking a park. There are plenty of other ways one could really know a park but this is the one that works for us.

What’s your favorite National Park?

We love them all. OK, but not really. We definitely have favorites, including (in alphabetical order) Big Bend, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Virgin Islands, and Yellowstone. We’ve spent glorious days in each of these parks from sunrise to sundown. They have amazing landscape views and tons of good wildlife.

Where are you headed next?

We just wrapped up a 10 week summer trip in which we visited 13 parks (including a month in California). We tackled big parks we can’t often reach, including Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon and backpacked 9 nights while we were on the road. Now we’re on a hiatus back at home grinding out the work that has to be done to sustain these trips. We think we’ll be able to sneak away for a few weeks in the winter to head back to Texas and Arizona. On deck for next summer is the Pacific Northwest.

Can you help me plan a National Parks trip?

Yes! We love the parks and love talking about them. We have helped countless people plan trips both big and small to National Parks, all for free just because we love the parks and want you to as well. You can always search this site for a park to find blog posts about trails in or visits to parks and our park pages should help you daydream about where to go. But if you want more, just reach out by contacting us below (or on Facebook or Instagram). We also have some tips for planning a park trip here.

 
 

 

Say Hello

Did you meet us on the trail? Do you like our work? Want to work together on a project? Want some help planning a trip to a National Park? Send us an email and we'll figure out some time to talk.  

Please complete the form below