Q & A with the “Traveling Pasleys” Part II

Q: Dave and Betsy Pasley, thanks for returning for Part II of our Q & A. Today we want to ask some questions about your many lists.

DP: Happy to do it, fire away.

BP: Ditto.

Q: How many lists do you have?

DP: I’m not sure, a bunch. And every now and then we think of a new one.

Q: OK, let’s start with the National Park Service sites. Tell us about that list.

DP: Yes, that is definitely a big one. The NPS list has been pretty important to our travels around the country because we often use it to determine our routes and the places we go and stay. We are NPS junkies for sure. Currently there are 419 NPS sites or “units” and Congress and the president periodically create new units. Confusingly to many people there are nearly two dozen different designations for NPS units and, occasionally, Congress changes the designations on a whim. Mind you, nothing else changes; same boundaries, same funding; they just change the designation. For instance, just this year Congress changed the designation for Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore to Indiana Dunes National Park and the year before that they gave the Gateway Arch complex in St. Louis the NP designation. So, currently, there are, 61 national parks among the 419 NPS units and there used to be four national lakeshores but now, after the change to Indiana Dunes, there are only three national lakeshores. So, the NPS list is always in flux and it can get pretty confusing trying to stay on top of it, much less explain it. Most people don’t fully grasp the breadth, the range, the complexity and the enormity of the National Park Service. They think it’s just the 59+1+1 now 61 national parks but it is much more than that.

Q: So, how many NPS units have you visited?

DP: My count currently stands at 281 Betsy’s is 243. But she is steadily gaining on me. On our trip this summer we will visit nearly two dozen NPS sites several of which I have been to and Betsy has not. So the gap is narrowing.

BP: The thing you have to remember when you look at these ridiculous NPS counts for Dave is that he “retired” at 47 in 2002, and he and Tex were on the road at least two months each of the next five summers before Tex headed off for college in the fall of 2007. So while they were traipsing around the country I was slaving away in my corporate gig at home. But … no resentment on my part of course, except for all the cheese doodles I ingested.

On the south rim of the Grand Canyon, February 2008.

Q: What’s your favorite NPS unit, so far?

DP: Aaaarrrrghhh! People ask me that all the time. It’s a tough question. I usually say Grand Canyon National Park because it is so beautiful and so superbly managed and resourced and because, in recent years, we’ve been visiting in the winter in the middle of the week when the crowds are down. Also because I’ve had so many great trips there with both Betsy and Tex and by myself; including an epic rim-to-rim-to-rim winter crossing in deep, untracked snow and single-digit temperatures. In a similar vein Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska stands out because Tex and I had a great adventure there in 2006 kayaking (seemingly) alone in a vast wilderness after flying in (and then out) on small planes, negotiating tides, dodging whales watching for grizzly bears, etc. You don’t forget stuff like that. Big Bend National Park is also high on the list because we have been there so many times over the entire span of our adult lives; canoeing the river canyons, backpacking in the mountains, driving back roads in our Jeep, puking up the tequila shots we bought across the river in Boquillas…so many memories. But I also want to be clear that I really enjoy the small and offbeat parks too, especially the national historic sites. There are 78 of those and we’ve been to well over half. Ditto for the national monuments. There are 88 of those and I’ve been to 62, Betsy to 55.

Q: Can you pick one of each that stands out?

We visited Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona on our honeymoon in 1978. We have not been back since then, but we still talk about it. Ford’s Theater National Historic Site in Washington D.C. is pretty incredible because of its significance, the fact that it is still an operating theater, the fact that you can stand just feet from where Lincoln was shot and because of the superb job of interpretation by the NPS to contextualize the significance of the event that took place there.

Q: Will you get to all of the NPS sites?

DP: I doubt it. For one thing, as previously mentioned, it’s a moving target. Congress and the president are constantly adding units (which I’m happy about). And they’re far-flung; Guam, American Samoa, Virgin Islands, etc. Alaska will be difficult, and expensive. We’ve got our work cut out for us. There are 22 NPS units in Alaska and Betsy has only been to five of them. I’ve been to just seven. We’ll have to fly into many of them and probably hire a guide. But it’s kind of like eating an elephant; we’ll keep taking one bite at a time and see what happens. We have been to every NPS site in more than a third of the states and I’m particularly pleased that we’ve been to 21 of the 22 NPS sites in Washington D.C.

Q: What “counts” as a visit to a national park unit? Do you have to watch the film, take the tour, hike to the bottom of the (grand) canyon?

DP: That’s a good and tough question. Obviously, everybody has their own standard. It’s not a standardized test with a single answer. You take a park like Big Bend where we’ve been 30-40 times. We’ve been to every corner of that massive place. By just about any standard that “counts”. On the flip side, we really don’t like caves and when we stopped at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky we looked around the visitor center a bit and kept going. Ditto for Timpanogos Cave National Monument in Utah where we used the bathroom, ate a picnic lunch and left. At Jewel Cave National Monument in South Dakota we didn’t even eat lunch. A fair argument could be made that those “visits” don’t “count”. Yet we “counted” them. On the other hand, I’ve been to the summit of Mt. Rainier. If you have to climb to the top of Mt. Rainier to “count” your visit to Mt. Rainier National Park not very many people would get that park checked off their list.

Dave lowers the flag at "our" Sand Island Lighthouse.

Betsy leads visitors on a tour of the lighthouse in 2015.

Q: You’ve volunteered at several national parks, how many?

DP: Surprisingly, only three parks. This year will be our fifth “tour of duty” as the volunteers “in charge of” Sand Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. We got our first volunteer gig at Apostle Islands in 2013 working at the Little Sand Bay Visitor Center and that led to the Sand Island job. We’ve also done two one-month stints as trail monitors in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, in 2017 and 2018. And we volunteered at Moores Creek National Battlefield in North Carolina in the summer of 2017. So nine pretty significant volunteer gigs but at just three parks.

Q: Wow, our time is up and we’ve only made it through one list. Can we Q&A with you again?

DP: Sure, any time.

BP: Why not? Dave does all of the talking anyway. I'm lucky to get in a sentence or two!