National Parks

I received a survey in the mail. Besides their main purpose, carefully placed at the end of the survey, asking for money, they asked which National Parks I or my family have visited. My first thought was the handful we plan to visit and mostly have visited on our path to and from Arizona/Minnesota. Add the ones in Alaska I hit. Oh yeah, don't forget the the ones from those family road trips (600 miles per day) my parents took my brother and me on way back when.

By this time I was 1: out of space allotted on the form, using borders for my scribbles, and 2: totally unsure just how many I was missing. After all, their question gave 400 as the number of possibilities.  Huh? Time to do some research. Wikipedia it is. They list only 63, however. At least they are alphabetical, give brief descriptions including the state(s) they are in, which in two cases informed me I had actually been there, and had correct names for them. I presumed the other 337 parks are national monuments. (OK, not exactly, as I found out.) More research listed only 130 of those, so now I'm a bit confused, enough to not feel guilty about not sending them any money. If they can't get that right, who the heck are they?

I did get some interesting information from working to list the national parks where we have visited. I came up with 22 by myself. Steve had lots of those, and added two different ones which I have never visited.

Someday, should I ever consider it an interesting task, I may try to research monuments and figure out how many of those we've visited. Wupatki, Sunset Crater, Devil's Tower....

OK, now I'm hooked, and Wikipedia has another alphabetical list. So:

Bears Ears, Casa Grande, Chimney Rock, Devil's Tower, Dinosaur, El Malpais, Grand Portage, Misty Fjords, Organ Pipe Cactus, Sonoran Desert, Sunset Crater Volcano, Walnut Canyon, Wupatki.

Then there are all the "other" things under the National Parks umbrella, some closer to home than I think of when I think National Parks, like Steve's favorite fishing spot when we're up in Shafer, no more than 5 miles away and the one we've spent the most time in along the border with Wisconsin: 

Vermilion Cliffs, Bears Ears, Mount Rushmore, Sitka National Historic Park, Mississippi R. National Rec. Area, St. Croix Nat'l Scenic River, Blue Ridge Parkway, Lewis and Clark Nat'l Historic Trail.

I'm almost starting to believe that 400 number from the survey, but calling them parks instead of being under their umbrella is misleading. So they still aren't getting any money from me,  unless I hit one of their actual visitor center stores. If they had them. 

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FYI for those of you who missed it - though how could you? - Trump got impeached for the second time today. I guess you have to say now that he's remarkable. - just in all the wrong ways.