Virginia duo visits 59 national parks in 59 weeks.
Kemp and Nabors at the Arctic Circle.
Photos courtesy of Darius Nabors
In American Samoa.
Ever fantasize about quitting your job, going all Jack Kerouac and hitting the road? In June of 2015, Charlottesville residents Darius Nabors and Trevor Kemp did just that. Inspired by the National Park Service’s centennial, the two friends—both graduates of the University of Virginia and in their early 30s—saw the occasion as the perfect excuse to pursue a lifelong dream: visit every national park in America.
Prior to setting out on the adventure, Nabors had committed to visiting at least one park a year, often with his father, who was a former national park ranger. “I realized that, at that rate, I’d be 72-years-old before I made it to all 59 parks,” he says. “And that didn’t feel right. This was something I wanted to do now.”
Recruiting Kemp, Nabors launched a crowd-funding campaign that raised around $10,000, created a blog, purchased cameras and set out on a 59-week adventure, which led the two men deep into some of the most beautiful landscapes the country has to offer. Spending the majority of their trip living out of a Dodge Ram pickup, the two traveled to the Virgin Islands, Maine, U.S. Samoa, Alaska and so on. Ultimately, beyond their personal craving for experience and naturalistic eyecandy, the two hoped the journey would inspire others—specifically, Internet onlookers—to appreciate America’s national parks.
“I think that, in a sense, these parks are a kind of time capsule we can hand down to our children and grandchildren,” says Kemp. “Eventually, you’ll be able to say ‘Here it is, this landscape looks exactly the way it did when I saw it way-back-when.’ That’s almost magical, really. That doesn’t happen with many things in life. But it’s only possible in so far as we can protect and keep these parks in pristine condition.”
Kemp dressed as John Muir on Precipice Trail.
Photo by Darius Nabors
Reflecting upon the highlights of their tour, amid a treasure trove of experiences like visiting Death Valley during an ultra-rare explosion of wild-flowers, exploring the Alaskan wilderness, or witnessing a “super blood-moon eclipse” from the slopes of Mount Ranier, both men named rafting the Grand Canyon as singularly spectacular. “We got together with some friends we met along the way and rafted 225 miles of the Colorado River, which passes through the Grand Canyon,” says Kemp. “The trip took 19 days and the variation was just amazing—there were placid lake-like conditions here, 14-18-foot waves and rapids there … At night, we’d camp along the riverbank, soaking up the sounds and gazing up at the stars.”
After completing their journey in August of 2016, the two look back on the project with a kind of quiet, nostalgic fondness—as if the whole thing is just a magnificent dream, an experience so profound and ethereal and fleeting as to be not only irreplicable, but haunting and fundamentally life-altering. “I can’t explain to you, at least not in words, what it’s like to see Denali rise 7,000 feet above the surrounding mountains,” says Nabors. “It’s one of those places where a photograph just doesn’t do it justice. If you want to truly see these parks, you have to get out there and visit them yourself.” 59in59.com
