Erica's #48 - Visit at least 10 more National Parks

Mel and I are National Park addicts. We have the park passport (yes, there is such a thing!), and we take any and every opportunity we can to experience a park we haven't been to before.  Without further ado, I'll give you a list of the new parks we visited:

1.  Mammoth Cave, KY - 3/9/2014 - I've lived just a few hours from Mammoth Cave for two decades now, but still hadn't ever visited.  We remedied that this Spring, on a quick day trip to view the cave!  We took the Historic Tour, which takes visitors past the most famous spots in the cave, including The Bottomless Pit and Fat Man's Misery (both of which live up to their names!).

2.  Mississippi River National Recreation Area, St. Paul, MN - 4/26/2014 - We stopped by here while visiting friends in Minneapolis this Spring.  The visitor center is in the lobby of the Science Museum of Minnesota, which we visited previously and loved.  The visitor center even has free fishing equipment to borrow if you want to try your hand at angling on the river!

3.  Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove, Washington, D.C. - 5/2/2014 - We took a very, very, very long walk from the Rosslyn Metro station just after we got off the plane to visit the grove.  It's situated in a nice location along the Potomac, and provides a quiet place for reflection just minutes from the hustle and bustle of D.C.  It's also a great place to view the Washington Monument.  We then walked almost all the way around the Pentagon to visit the memorial there, which was very sobering. It made for a long, long day!

4.  The White House, Washington, D.C. - 5/3/2014 - This is probably the coolest of the new National Parks we had the privilege to visit.  If you contact your Senator, you can request a tour of the White House.  We gave them an open-ended couple of months to try to get a tour set up, and they set us up for a Saturday afternoon in May - a beautiful time to visit our nation's capitol!  The tour of The White House is self-guided, and frankly pretty impressive.   It was the afternoon before the correspondent's dinner, so the President was likely at home, but we had no sightings of him :)


5.  Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, Washington, D.C. - 5/3/2014 - Mary Bethune was a leader in the Civil Rights movement, and the house was the first headquarters of The National Council of Negro Women.  She started a private school for African-American children in Florida, which turned into a university later on.  There were some very impressive photos of Mary McLeod Bethune with some of the most influential leaders of her time - President Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and W.E.B. DuBois.


6.  African American Civil War Memorial, Washington, D.C. - 5/3/2014 - This is a newer Memorial and Museum, and is a really well done one.   There was a ton of information to take in, following the timeline of The Civil War.  There is also a very neat statue across the street.

7.  Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington, D.C. - 5/3/2014 - Yes, May 3 was a busy day for us!  This site is across the river, so we hopped on the Metro to Anacostia, which, honestly isn't a great part of town.  We walked a LONG way to the site through a not great neighborhood, but I'm good at finding routes like this!  We were slightly late for our guided tour time, but we caught up with them to learn about the home and Douglass' family.  The house is situated on a gorgeous lot on a hill, with a view of D.C. and the river. Douglass escaped from slavery and spent his life fighting for equality and justice for all human beings - what a great example for everyone to live by!

8.  Cabrillo National Monument, San Diego, CA - 7/4/2014 - Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to set foot on the West Coast.  We visited this park with my parents, spending our 4th of July weekend at their house about an hour and a half east of San Diego.  The pinnacle of the park is on a high peninsula, which provided sweeping views of San Diego Bay.  There is also a cool little lighthouse in the park.

9.  Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, Chillicothe, OH - 8/3/2014 - We stopped by here on our way home from the camping adventure.  The Hopewell people lived here almost two millenia ago, and the mounds of their homes, gathering places, and burial grounds are preserved in this park.


10.  Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Vancouver, WA - 9/5/2014 - Fort Vancouver was a location of the Hudson Bay Company, a British territorial interest, which morphed into a barracks for the U.S. Army.  The army's goal was to provide peaceful settlement of the Oregon territory,which led to warring and displacing the American Indian population.