Grandma visiting every national park before she’s 90
Published at
CNN
(CNN) — An Ohio grandmother is on a mission to visit every national park.
She’s got more than 30 to go and just a year to do it. That’s the goal, anyway.
Joy Ryan, 89, wants to see all 61 parks before she turns 90. She’s got plenty of support in a very special travel companion — her grandson, Brad.
It was actually his idea.
When he told her about a trip he took hiking the Appalachian Trail while in veterinary school, she expressed regret at never having done anything like that. All her kids were grown, her husband had died 20 years ago — and she had never seen a mountain.
So in 2015, he took her to Great Smokey Mountains National Park, and they’ve been traveling together ever since.
A year should be plenty of time for this pair to achieve their goal. They once visited 21 national parks in 28 days.
Brad says his grandmother knows she’s seeing these amazing sites for the first and last time, and watching her take it all in has changed the way he lives.