By Carla Carlton Most people come home from a vacation with lasting memories and beautiful photos. Austin Adam ’17 came home from a 2017 road trip with a personal mission: to visit every one of the 63 U.S. National Parks.  With a trip to Virgin Islands National Park in December 2023, he completed that mission.  “After doing a summer field job with Colorado Parks & Wildlife in 2017, I had the opportunity to do a three-week road trip hitting every national park in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas,” he said. “While I had been to a few national parks before then, that is really when I realized how much I enjoyed it and thought it would be a rewarding goal to have.”  National Parks are designated by Congress as protected areas operated by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior. Adam’s first national park was Badlands, in South Dakota, in 2010. He completed the bulk of the trips in the past six years.    Adam, who grew up in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, graduated with a major in Environmental Science with a minor in Biology in 2017 and is now an environmental consultant for an engineering and environmental firm in Oakland, California. “As someone who works within the environmental field and has a love for the outdoors, it is amazing to visit, see and experience everything our national parks offer,” he said. “You have some of the most pristine environments on the planet, the most unique geological processes, a rich history from the indigenous tribes who this land belongs to. Every ecosystem and animal you would want to see can be found in a national park.” 

Austin’s Top Three National Parks

 Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska This park is extremely remote and offers things I only experienced here. At this park I ice-climbed on glaciers, went underneath glaciers into ice caves and explored a historical copper mine. I also took the best flightseeing tour I’ve taken, flying about multiple mountain ranges, glaciers, ice sheets and glaciers calving into the ocean.  Isle Royale National Park, Michigan This island in Lake Superior is remote and requires either a six-hour boat ride or one-hour seaplane ride to get to it. I found the mix of the mountainous spine of the island along with the rocky coast to be stunning for backpacking.  Olympic National Park, Washington This park offers so much to see: rainforest, rocky coastlines and glacier-carved mountains. I've visited three times and had different views and experiences each time. I also always had luck seeing a large amount of wildlife.