Website Updates

The Next Stage Of The Charge to the Parks Journey

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Since taking a long trip in May and June, I’ve had to focus on some household things. This has been sad for me because I was haven’t been able to keep up the pace of travel I had hoped for, and I haven’t been able to keep working on the EV travel guides or much of anything else. So, I’ve been thinking about how to make this project a success while life keeps happening!

Giving up on this project is not an option. Not only is it something I want to do, but it’s also something that the world needs. Those of us with EVs know that they’re up to the task, but the rest of the industry and automotive buyers in North America seem to be dragging their feet. We need to be sharing stories of visiting places like national parks, state parks, and more as much as we can.

So, to make sure I’m contributing to a better world with this project, I’m going to make some changes.

First off, I’m going to be replacing travel guides with collections of stories of real people traveling to the parks. Some of these stories will be mine, but many will be from other people as I find them. This will be better because the information can’t go out of date. As for the navigational value of the guides, I’m going to be improving a general travel guide that helps people get the latest information before their own trips.

The other thing I’m going to do is spend less time worrying about taking trips and more time finding useful news and information about the parks. This will involve following the rollout of EV charging networks, gathering up other people’s stories, and reviewing products that we’d all find useful on our EV journeys.

Finally, I’m going to make my trips more meaningful. I plan to still do frequent regional trips, but I’ll probably only do 2-3 long trips every year. On each of these visits, I’m going to try to spend a lot more time at each park to get better information, better photos, and just better quality. Doing it this way will take years longer, but it will mean doing a better job.

The other thing about staying longer and doing more repeat visits will mean better opportunities for videos, scenic photography (prints will be available), and much more interesting content both here and on social media.

More posts will be coming soon!

Bottom Ten Parks Now Covered

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With the addition of the Great Basin National Park’s EV Travel Guide, we’ve now covered both the top ten most and least visited national parks! Sadly, a number of the parks in the bottom ten are in remote areas of Alaska and are simply not reachable by car, so they all got put together in one placeholder guide. But, there are guides for the rest.

The next step will be to make sure every state has at least one park in each state with a guide written. After that, parks will be added by reader demand and by our own interests. If there’s a park you’d like a guide written for sooner, be sure to reach out in the comments or on social media!

 

 

Updated Guides For New Mexico Available!

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After taking some time to visit two national parks and one recreation area in an EV over the last few days, I made some updates and improvements!

First off, I updated Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains national parks with new information and updated photos from my visit. There’s no much more information about attractions nearby, especially on the backroads behind both parks. I have more trips planned for that area in the fall and will be adding more and updating. An important thing I added to both pages was information about the Guadalupe Rim, a great but rugged path into the area.

An image from my recent drive into the area near both parks via Guadalupe Rim Road.

 

Another important thing I did was add a page for a very underrated recreation area near Socorro, New Mexico: San Lorenzo Canyon. There, you’ll find a very nice set of sandstone canyons that almost any EV can not only get to, but drive in the bottom of!

EV Travel Guides For Top Ten Parks Now Available

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We’re chugging along with EV travel guides, and now we have the top ten national parks (by 2023 visitor numbers) covered. These parks (among others with guides) are:

  1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park
  2. Grand Canyon National Park
    1. North Rim
    2. South Rim
  3. Zion National Park
  4. Yellowstone National Park
  5. Rocky Mountain National Park
  6. Yosemite National Park
  7. Acadia National Park
  8. Grand Teton National Park
  9. Joshua Tree National Park
  10. Olympic National Park

Our next steps will be to cover some of the least visited national parks, and then try to seek your input on what parks to cover next. Also, we’ll be starting on the first trip logs to the national parks in just a few days, where we’ll link to trips we’ve taken and work to improve the guides.

Featured image by NPS (Public Domain).

11 Parks, One Page For Unreachable Alaskan Parks, Mission & Purpose up!

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I’ve been busy adding more EV travel guides to the website, including one that isn’t really a guide.

Let’s talk about the guides, first! We’re now up to 11 parks covered, now including the top 5 most visited parks. These parks so far are:

You’ll notice that I split Grand Canyon into two pages, largely because the north and south rims are so different from each other. Sure, they’re only 10-20 miles apart, but the drive from one to the other is over 200 miles and takes several hours. So, it made sense to make sure it’s clear that one is easy to reach while the other can be reached only with some extra work.

Another page I added was for the least popular national parks, and most of them are in Alaska. It’s not that these parks aren’t amazing as much as that they’re super tough to get to. ICE cars can’t even get to them, even if they’re the best four wheel drive off-roading machines. So, it made sense to cover these all at the same time so that people can see why we skipped over so many parks and monuments in that state.

The good news? Three of them can be reached by EV, so I’ll cover those soon.

Right now, I’m working on covering the rest of the top 10 visited parks, and then I’ll start working on the 10 least visited parks. After that, I’ll work on getting the rest of the national parks covered!

I also added a page describing the mission and purpose of Charge to the Parks. You can read that here.

 

Featured image by the National Park Service (Public Domain).

Four Parks and EV Travel Tips Added!

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So far, four parks’ worth of information for EV drivers has been added to the map and list, and the basics of EV backroad driving is now live!

Parks added so far:

Next up is Saguaro National Park, followed by some parks further away from this cluster of parks to spread things out a bit. This project will take several months to finish, along with other plans for this site. Stay tuned!

Featured image on this post: White Sands National Park from the nearby Sacramento Mountains. Image by Jennifer Sensiba.