Tag Archives: Update

Our 500th Blog Post!

A big thank you to our readers for continuing to support our website!  We recently reflected on our love of travel for the website All Fifty States Club and wanted to share that with you. And if you are around Wyoming, please check out our next 4 presentations at local libraries.

Our travel website Raven About The Parks is dedicated to providing information on recreating on U.S. public lands.  Our mission is to shine a light on the lesser-known National Forests and National Park Service sites in America, and eventually to expand into covering National Wildlife Refuges and State Parks.  We enjoy outdoor pursuits like backpacking, kayaking, camping, and snowshoeing, but we also love touring historic buildings, exploring museums, reading interpretive signs, and attending college football games.  We take joy in discovering new places, and it seems like every time we visit one new spot, we add two more to our list.  That is fine with us, since we believe travel is a never-ending quest to live life to its fullest.  We hope that sharing our travels helps inspire others to “Find what you love and do more of it.” 

In 2016, we took ten months off work in Wyoming to travel the world and we visited all 50 states between April and November.  We had already been to more than 40 states at that point, and Tiff’s final state was New Jersey, while Scott’s was Connecticut.  Our goal that year was in every state to stop into at least one State Park and a National Park Service site that we had never been to (some states like New Hampshire only have one).  We printed blank sheets for each state to record the dates we visited, wildlife spotted, favorite places and people, and our impressions of each state’s drivers, roads, and topography.  One of the best things we recorded was a list of places and events to return for, which has helped us plan some awesome trips in the subsequent years.

Between 2017 and 2023, we visited all 50 states once again (Delaware was the final one) while researching travel guidebooks we wrote on all 155 National Forests and road tripping in each state.  We also made sure by the end that we had spent the night in every state (with Rhode Island being our last).  The 50 States of Great guidebook is based on our experiences and thousands of hours of research; we picked our favorite National Park, State Park, National Forest (40 states have at least one), museum, roadside attraction, and eight other categories for all states.  We even included shorter chapters on American Samoa, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (and we hope to visit Guam and Saipan someday).  If you are interested, 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America is available on Amazon.

We continue to travel across the U.S. seeking new adventures and returning to favorite places.  In 2022, we came upon the book The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau that explained the mental health benefits of working toward a greater life goal (like running a marathon in all 50 states or attending a baseball game at every MLB stadium).  We had been doing this all along, but since reading the book we have gone back to check in how many states we have bought a stuffed animal (45), hiked to a waterfall (38), crushed a penny (46), climbed to the highest point (29), visited the capital city (50 finished in Olympia, WA in 2023), showered at a Planet Fitness (29), and entered a museum (46).  Our current active pursuits include attending a college football game (39) and hiking in a National Wildlife Refuge (33) in every state.

Basically, we write about the places we have been to inspire others to “Find what you love and do more of it.”  We especially enjoy visiting new places, knowing that some of them will exceed our expectations and surprise us in ways we never could have anticipated.  We flip through travel magazines and scroll through Pinterest boards (check out ours here), but some of our more interesting finds have been inspired by obscure sources such as U.S. Mint quarters and U-Haul Super Graphics (we are mildly obsessed with these and have been known to burst into jubilation upon seeing a Saskatchewan moose on a dune).  We look forward to a future filled with travel across the U.S. and abroad.  To put our expertise on U.S. travel to good use, we have started posting one-week itineraries for all 50 states (starting with Kansas, Georgia, Idaho, and Rhode Island).

After reading an article on the website All Fifty States Club by Bob Rainville, we were inspired to determine how many state-to-state border crossings we had completed.  It took more than an hour of poring over maps and searching our memories, but we figured out there are 104 drivable border crossings and that we have made 96 of them already on our cross-country journeys.  Half of the eight remaining involve the corners of Missouri, which touches eight different states (the most of any state).

We appreciate your time and hope to produce another 500 quality posts for our audience in the coming years.  We have previously made Top 10 Lists of our favorite posts from each 100 post milestone, but this time we decided to create a different list highlighting the Top 10 Natural Phenomena to See in the U.S.  Watch for it soon!

Thank you for reading our blog! 

Scott and Tiff

Cheyenne, WY

Please check out our next 4 presentations at libraries in Wyoming!

“Find what you love and do more of it.” 

We recently published the expanded 2nd edition of our guidebook to the National Parks— A Park to Yourself: Finding Solitude in America’s 63 National Parks (available for sale on Amazon). The new edition is more than 60 pages longer with four-page chapters on Alaska’s wilderness National Parks that formerly had only a page. We also wrote a six-page chapter on the newest National Park— New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

Our travel guidebook 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America is also available for sale on Amazon

4 upcoming library presentations in Wyoming

We are excited about our 4 library presentations over the next month as we kick off the summer travel season!

This weekend, we are first giving a presentation on our 6 P’s of outdoor travel planning at the Laramie County Library in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  It will be held in the Sunflower Room (3rd floor) at 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 11, 2024. 

It is session one of a three-part series called Outdoor Adventure & Trail Ready! Additional sessions will be held June 1 and June 15 covering backpacking essentials and an intro to dendrology at the historic High Plains Arboretum.

We are also presenting our 6 P’s of travel planning at a Carnegie library (built in 1918) in Lusk, Wyoming at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 5. Check out the Niobrara County Library website for more information.

We will have all four of our guidebooks for sale before and after the talk and would be happy to sign them for you.

We hope to see you there!

We recently published the expanded 2nd edition of our guidebook to the National Parks— A Park to Yourself: Finding Solitude in America’s 63 National Parks (available for sale on Amazon). The new edition is more than 60 pages longer with four-page chapters on Alaska’s wilderness National Parks that formerly had only a page. We also wrote a six-page chapter on the newest National Park— New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

Our travel guidebook 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America is also available for sale on Amazon

We published the expanded 2nd edition of our guidebook to the 63 National Parks!

We are excited to announce the publication of the expanded 2nd edition of our guidebook to the National Parks— A Park to Yourself: Finding Solitude in America’s 63 National Parks. It is now available for sale on Amazon. The new edition is more than 60 pages longer with four-page chapters on Alaska’s wilderness National Parks that formerly had only a page. We also wrote a six-page chapter on the newest National Park— New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

In this Expanded 2nd Edition of A Park to Yourself, we sort through the enormous amount of information about National Parks to select the best trails, guided tours, photography spots, and wildlife viewing areas. America’s 63 National Parks are busier than ever, so we help you decide what places are worth the crowds and where you can find solitude. We identify the peak months of visitation and the busiest places in each park, whether you are attracted to those spots or want to avoid them altogether.

Whether you are looking to camp, backpack, or stay in a lodge, we cover the options, both inside and outside of the park. We also include insider tips and nearby attractions to help you make the most of your vacation.

We hope you enjoy A Park to Yourself: Finding Solitude in America’s 63 National Parks and thank you for your support!

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Thanks for attending our library presentation


Thank you to everyone who attended the presentation last night on our newest travel guidebook 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America (available for sale on Amazon and at Cheyenne’s 307 Made store). If you couldn’t make it, we have posted the PowerPoint slides below.

Thanks for your support!


We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Reminder: Book signing this Tuesday

We are giving a presentation on road tripping in the U.S.A. at the Laramie County Library in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  It will be held in the Cottonwood Room (1st floor) at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 5, 2023.  We will have all our books for sale before and after the talk and would be happy to sign them for you.

Our newest travel guidebook 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America is also available for sale on Amazon

50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America is a starting point for planning a road trip of any length, covering the best of each state in 12 categories: scenic drive, State Park, museum, waterfall, roadside attraction, National Forest, campsite, and more.  50 States of Great is a culmination of our extensive travels through the United States of America seeking out well-known destinations and less-frequented spots.  The goal of our book is to be useful whether you are taking a cross-country road trip or exploring your home state.

We hope to see you Tuesday!

If you can’t make it, you can still check out our slide deck of one (mostly) off-the-beaten-path destination we love in each of the 50 states.

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.