Interview with Bob and Kathy from RunningOnSouler
And Their Six-Month Electric Road Trip to All 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 States
Tell us something about the two of you:
We are recently retired. Many of our vacations over the years when our three boys were growing up were spent on trips to the National Parks. We wanted to instill in them our love of the great outdoors and nature. We are dedicated environmentalists, and we think it’s important that we leave our children and their children an earth as beautiful as the one we have enjoyed.
We think that one of the biggest challenges we face today is global warming. We also think that solutions are available to us, which is basically to electrify all of our machines, especially our vehicles, and to produce all of our electricity from renewable non-carbon sources and improve the efficiency of our energy use. One of the reasons we are taking this trip is to show, in our role as private citizens, that solutions are available today, and, in particular, that electric vehicles are ready for prime time. Most people think that charging an EV is a big problem. We want to show that if we can go to all the National Parks in an electric car, many in extremely remote locations, you can, in fact, go anywhere in an EV. Along the way, we are having the time of our lives taking this adventure together and seeing our beautiful National Parks, while also trying to raise some money for the National Park Foundation.
Tell us something about this electric project of six months of planning, plodding, plotting, and calculating designed to get you to all 51 National Parks in the lower 48 states:
It took a fair amount of time to plan this trip—roughly a year. But, even if we weren’t going in an EV, it would have taken almost as long. We had to plan the best route to be in the parks at the right time of year, as well as how many days we would want to spend in each park. And then we had to reserve lodging in National Parks, many of which have to be reserved a year ahead of time.
Adding the EV factor on top of that, we had to find hotels and lodges that had overnight chargers—it would surprise you how many there are. For charging along the way, the Tesla Supercharger network is now so well developed that you can go almost everywhere in the country on the major roads. There are, however, a few places that are challenging, particularly the remote areas of the country where some of the National Parks are located. There are a couple of handfuls of cases where we had to be creative. But because electricity is ubiquitous, there are always options. There are almost always RV sites near the National Parks that have 240-volt outlets we can use to charge with our mobile connector. In one case, we are renting a house and using the dryer outlet, which is also a 240-volt outlet. And in some cases, there are now charging options available to us that did not exist a year ago when the trip was being planned, such as hotels that have recently added chargers.
After all that planning, the last phase was to plan the activities in each park because in some of the parks, tickets or lotteries are now required either for entrance to the parks or for certain activities within them because the parks became so popular over the last couple of years. For example, we had to have timed entrance tickets to get into Arches National Park. We also needed to win the lottery to be able to hike the very popular Angel’s Landing Trail at Zion National Park.
So, so many National Parks? When did your passion to see so many parks begin, and what keeps you motivated as the summer months roll in across the country?
Since we are both East Coasters, we didn’t have a lot of exposure to many of the National Parks when we were growing up. When we were dating, we occasionally would go out to Shenandoah National Park for a hike. But, when we were pregnant with our first son, we took a three-week trip to California, driving up the coast from LA to San Francisco. We spent a few days at Yosemite, and we completely fell in love with it. We couldn’t get enough of the grandeur and the beauty of it all.
When our boys were young, we spent a few days in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the boys ended up loving the hikes we did to the tops of mountains. Hiking is a wonderful family activity.
Shortly after that, when Kathy and the boys decided they didn’t want to just sit by the pool all summer, Kathy threw some camping gear and the boys in the minivan and headed west without much of a plan. We headed west to South Dakota where we camped and saw some of the great National Monuments, like Mt Rushmore and Devils Tower, and the wonderful Custer State Park (which we think should become part of a new Lakota Black Hills National Park). We hiked and had a wonderful time camping and enjoying the great outdoors. We then drove south to Denver to meet Bob, who flew in for a few days, and we took a day trip to see Rocky Mountain National Park, which we also loved. Fast forward to 2004 when we took a three-week trip to California with the boys to show them Yosemite, as well as the gorgeous California coast and Lake Tahoe. In 2006, we took another family trip to explore the National Parks of Colorado. We visited Rocky Mountain again, as well as Great Sand Dunes and Mesa Verde, and we also snuck in a quick visit across the Utah border to see Arches. All of the natural beauty of these parks and the fun we had hiking in them made us want to explore more and more of the parks.
Even though we’ve been to many great parks already, both on this trip and in the past, the thing that keeps us motivated is the next National Park. We’ve been to many wonderful parks, but there are so many more still to come that we’ve wanted to see for years now—especially those in the Pacific Northwest and the Grand Tetons. One of the things we’ve learned from the parks that we have visited so far is how different they all are and how we have enjoyed some that maybe we didn’t expect to. In addition to the natural beauty we have seen, one of the unexpected parts of this trip is how much we are learning in the parks about history, geology, and plants and animals.
Why? Why would anyone conceive this idea? Why would anyone want to do this trip? What keeps you motivated? Do you ever feel like going home now that you’re so far into this project?
As we said before, the two things that keep us motivated are the two things we started with—showing that EVs are ready for prime time and that you can go anywhere in them, and exploring and learning about all the National Parks. We are also trying to give back to the National Parks by raising money for the National Park Foundation. Our fantasy is that our little trip will go viral like the ALS Water Bucket Challenge and that we raise a lot of money for our beloved national parks and the National Park Foundation that supports them. There is a link to our National Park Foundation donation page on our website.
While we are not tempted to head home (at least yet), there are many things we definitely miss about home—our three boys, home cooking, Kathy’s gardens, sleeping in our own bed, our house and sitting on our front porch, and our friends. The other challenge of being away from home for so long has been illness and injury, both of which have occurred in the almost three months we’ve been on the road.
How much planning did this take? Six months, and 51 parks; that’s a lot of miles. How long did it take to cogitate the calculations? Who did the majority of the “book work”?
Bob conceived and planned this trip from beginning to end. He spent many late nights and weekends figuring it all out. It was his second full-time job for the year leading up to our trip. Of course, as an analyst, he had a spreadsheet to calculate all the dates and miles, and to record our plans for charging at the lodges and on the road. As we mentioned before, the longest and most challenging planning task was reserving lodging at the most popular parks, which get booked a year ahead of time. And on top of that, some of the popular parks are now so crowded that we had to secure entry tickets from the National Park Service weeks or months ahead of our arrival. Unfortunately, that is quite a change from our earlier National Park trips, when we could be much more spontaneous.
While we’ve been on the road and Bob has been behind the wheel of his beloved Tesla (not allowing Kathy to drive), Kathy has been planning our daily itineraries in the parks using such resources as earthtrekkers.com and the AllTrails app, as well as figuring out the best places to eat.
How many miles do you expect this will take, now that you’re out on the road and have some more idea of the wear and tear?
As part of the planning, and because Bob is an incurable analyst, we have a spreadsheet that includes the distance between each park. That adds up to almost exactly 17,000 miles. But it will actually be more than with the miles traveled within the parks. After visiting the first 28 parks, we have traveled 12,293 miles.
How many miles will you two have walked by most of this journey?
When we started off, we had the stretch goal of hiking 1,000 miles. But now that we are halfway through, we realize that we are older than we thought and that 1,000 miles was a bigger stretch than we anticipated. Now we are hoping to exceed 500 miles, assuming we stay healthy and avoid further injuries. After the first 28 parks, we’ve logged about 230 miles.
Electric Cars. The vehicle of the future and the future is now. The perceived need for all who currently drive an internal combustion engine. How did you get involved in a love for them?
About 30 years ago, there was an article in one of the major news magazines about the emerging problem of global warming. At that point, it became obvious to Bob that this was going to be a major problem—other than the possibility of nuclear war, probably the most serious problem facing humanity given its far-reaching consequences and the difficulty of transitioning off of fossil fuels. While the magnitude of the problem can easily lead people to a very pessimistic view, Bob tends to be an optimist and can also see that we have the technologies to solve the problem. It’s just a matter of getting it done.
In the past, one of the things that has made America great, is that we have led the world, with optimism, into a better future. Actually, the idea that the future will be better is really at the heart of the American dream—and that optimism has been one of the things that defines us as Americans. So it’s incredibly frustrating to see that we seem to have lost that spirit and adopted almost a defeatist view of the future. But there is the possibility of a fantastically better future just waiting for us to grab it. A future that is better than the fossil fuel system we have today in every meaningful way—with abundant and low-cost energy, cleaner air, more energy security, and more good jobs for Americans—if we lead the way. We can’t understand why many Americans seem to be afraid of moving towards this better future, or full of pessimism about America’s ability to meet the challenge.
Our cars and trucks powered by internal combustion engines are a very large part of the global warming problem today. But electric vehicles are also one of the biggest parts of the solution, which has three fundamental elements—the three “Es”: electrifying all our machines, especially our vehicles; producing our electricity from renewable non-carbon sources; and improving the efficiency of our energy use. Electric vehicles are obviously a huge part of the first element—electrifying our machines—but they also dramatically improve the efficiency of our energy use, as EVs are about 90 percent efficient compared to 25-30 percent for internal combustion engines, which waste most of their energy on heat. And the great thing about EVs as part of the solution is that they allow us to continue our current way of life, which is obviously dependent on the freedom and versatility offered by our cars and trucks, without compromising the health of the planet. In addition, once you drive an EV, you realize how much better they are—not just more efficient, but more reliable and less expensive to operate, and offering much better performance. When we were kids in the 1960s, America was a very optimistic place. By the 21st century, we were going to have flying cars, fusion power, and missions to Mars. It blows our minds that people are still driving around in gasoline-powered cars, which are certainly not the future!
Are you a tree-hugging, whale-saving, recycling conservationist? How long have you been driving an EV?
Yes, we certainly are! And shouldn’t everyone love trees and the natural environment? We even have pictures of us hugging trees in a couple of the parks! We also drive around with grocery bags full of recycling until we are able to find recycling containers, which, shockingly, are not provided in many of the National Parks! When Bob is appointed Secretary of the Interior (a job that he would seriously love to have!), he will make sure that all National Parks have recycling containers as well as EV chargers, solar panels, and electric buses.
We adopted electric vehicles soon after they became commercially available, after following their development for years before that. Bob got a Nissan Leaf in 2014. Despite its limited range, it served for several years as a perfect second car for commuting, and charging was never an issue for that use. We had a reservation for Tesla’s Model 3 when that became available—the first affordable long-range EV. But we switched to the cross-over variant, the Model Y, which has a hatchback and more cargo space and headroom. We became a two-EV family when we bought the Tesla in 2020, and we have taken a couple of long-range trips in it before our ongoing National Park adventure.
Explain and describe your current, cross-country EV car?
We are making this trip in a Tesla Model Y, which is a crossover variant of the very popular Tesla Model 3. It has more headroom, cargo space, and a hatchback and is very comfortable to drive and to ride in. It has about 300 miles range, although that depends on how fast you travel.
While on the road, we generally charge at one of the Tesla Superchargers along the way while we are eating lunch. They are remarkably fast. Not as fast as pumping gas, but that is largely irrelevant because we eat lunch while the car is plugged in at a Supercharger and the car is always done charging before we are done eating. Once at our destination, we can almost always charge overnight at a charger at our hotel or lodge. Most of those have been Destination Chargers that Tesla has provided to the hotels to help build out the charging network while helping the hotels attract customers—a very smart strategy by Tesla and a mutually beneficial business proposition for the hotels. For hotels that offer non-Tesla chargers—which have the very clucky name of “Level 2 J-1772” chargers, we also have a simple adaptor, provided by Tesla with the car, that allows us to use them.
How do you possibly pack efficiently for a six-month trip with lots of exercising and sweating?
We started off with too much stuff in the car with the attitude that “when in doubt, just throw it in” because we had so much cargo space in the car. However, after being on the road for almost three months, we realized that laundry facilities are found in many of our hotels (and often are free) and it’s easier to function and pack up our bags and the car after each hotel stay with less stuff. Kathy found that she packed too much non-hiking clothes—nice clothes to go to dinner in—while Bob found that he packed too many hiking clothes. When our youngest son met us in Zion National Park recently, we sent him home with two extra bags of surplus clothes and gear.
How long have you two been this much into hiking?
Kathy loves working out, whether it’s at Orange Theory Fitness classes, riding her Peloton at home, biking, taking long walks, and working in her garden. Bob loves playing hockey, taking long walks, biking, and working in the yard. We both love hiking and being in the great outdoors just about more than anything. We also both love to eat! Hiking allows us to enjoy a good lunch on the trail and a good dinner afterwards. Food always tastes best when it’s been earned!
How long have you two been this much into National Parks? How many parks had your previously visited before this trip began?
Before we started this trip, Kathy had been to 19 of the National Parks, although two of them were not yet designated as National Parks when she visited, and Bob had been to 20—not counting a few he might have been to as a young child but doesn’t remember.
Do your friends and/or family think you’re crazy? Tell us about your family, and your marriage, of sorts?
Many people we spoke to while planning the trip thought it sounded awesome. A few of Kathy’s friends thought that it was crazy. And we’re told that some of Bob’s former co-workers had a betting pool that we would run out of juice and be stranded on the side of the road somewhere. A lot of people had questions about how we were going to do the trip. And many people, after being told that we were going to ALL the National Parks would ask if we were going to a particular National Park! Or, they would ask if we were going to places that are NOT National Parks, such as National Monuments and State Parks, as if going to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 States wasn’t enough!
If it’s not too personal, what does one budget to eat over 500 meals and spend @170 nights in hotels while on the road?
Well, let’s start with food. Most of the time, our hotels provide a free breakfast, and many days we are eating PB&Js for lunch while on the trail, so those two meals are kind of a moot point, and maybe even cost less than eating at home. With regards to dinner, we often share a meal because American serving portions are much too big. And, if we were eating at home, grocery prices are just about as high these days.
Lodging is obviously an added expense while we’re on the road. Hotels are generally $200-$300 a night, sometimes more and sometimes less. We are staying in hotels a little less than 200 nights, so you can do the math. It’s a major expense, but much of the trip is being paid with Bob’s accrued PTO that he accumulated over the last couple of years.
When did you get the idea to do this? Whose idea was it? How hard was it to talk the other one into it?
Three years ago, in 2019, when we were visiting Zion National Park, we took a day trip to Escalante National Monument and stopped for lunch in the remote little town of Boulder, Utah. While there, we noticed that there were three EV chargers in the parking lot. That struck us as remarkable, given how remote Boulder is. Bob already had a strong interest in EVs—he owned a 2014 Nissan Leaf and was planning to order a Tesla when the more affordable models became available. This interest, in addition to coming upon theses chargers, led to the notion in Bob’s mind that if you can travel to places as remote as Boulder, Utah, in an EV, you should be able to go anywhere in an EV. There were also chargers at our lodge at Zion, and Bob took a picture of them at the time and posted on social media that this is where we would charge when we were on our trip to all of the National Parks. Of course, he hadn’t broached the idea to Kathy yet, but the idea was percolating in his head.
Fast forward three years to 2022, and we visited the same two charging stations again. There is a social media post the day we arrived in Escalante with photos of the chargers from both 2019 and 2022, along with an explanation of the history of the idea.
Kathy’s first reaction when Bob seriously suggested this trip was, “Are you crazy? Find someone else to go with you!” Of course, she has absolutely no recollection of having said that! Initially, the thought of being away from home for six months did not appeal to her. The number 1 thing she knew she would miss the most—aside from our three boys—was our house and being able to work in her gardens. The idea grew on her once Bob started talking about the adventure and the plan to share the experience on social media. She had the fantasy that once we started sharing on social media, our trip might go viral and by the time we got to California, Ellen DeGeneres would want to have us on her show to talk about our trip and about raising money for the National Parks. Sadly, Ellen ended her show before we could get to California … otherwise we are certain she would have contacted us by now!
Any second thoughts or current hesitations?
The trip has been wonderful—no second thoughts about it. The biggest challenge has been dealing with injuries so far from home. Other than wildfires that could close some of the parks, as they did last summer, injuries are the one thing that could cause us to reconsider completing the trip as planned.
What do you have to say to Americans about their parks, or the need to convert cars over to electric vehicles?
Unfortunately, many of our parks are becoming overly loved and are badly overcrowded. Zion is the best example—it is the second-most visited park, but it is only 28th in size of the 51 parks in the lower 48 national parks. And much of it is inaccessible. That combination makes for a lot of people in a relatively small amount of space, which in turn makes it hard to enjoy nature the way it should be appreciated.
Other things we would want to say to the American people about their parks include the following. Get out of your cars and onto the hiking trails. Heed the National Park signs and rules—stay on the trails, do NOT feed the animals and enjoy them from a distance. Respect others on the trails by learning proper trail etiquette—keep your voices down, maintain your distance (don’t tailgate other hikers), and let others who are moving faster than you pass you on the trail. Follow the Leave No Trace principle—this includes things like orange and banana peels and cigarette butts—so that others can enjoy nature the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
We also agree with Ken Burns that our National Parks are America’s best idea. They reflect the natural beauty of our country, and they are one of our best attractions for visitors from other countries—some of whom we have met during this trip. A few years ago, we were on a wonderful biking trip along the Danube River through Austria that ended in Vienna. We were supposed to be awed by all the palaces in the city, but we were actually appalled at the waste of so many riches used to construct gaudy buildings for a privileged few born into royalty. We are much more attracted to the notion—represented so well in America’s National Park system—that the country’s natural resources should be open to all our citizens to enjoy. We are so appreciative of the crucial decisions made by Stephen Mather, the first Director of the National Park Service, to open the parks to the people.
We would also note that, although we have seen some improvements in many of the National Parks with recent financial infusions, they still need maintenance and renovations, so we should all help keep them in great shape by donating to the National Park Foundation. We have a link to a donation page on our website.
From our experience, we have also seen some improvements that can be made to the National Park system—particularly to deal with the recent over-crowding. The ticketing system for the most popular and crowded parks was necessary and has worked well in places like Arches. But the timelines for purchasing advance tickets are all over the place for the different parks, and that system might be standardized a little better. There are also lines at the entrance gates to some of the parks that are much longer than necessary because there are no express lanes for people who already have passes, and you have the crazy situation of Rangers processing credit cards for entry fees when all of that could be done online before arriving at the parks.
We would also like to see the National Park Service do even more to be a leader in environmental protection. Of course, it already does a great job with the environmental education provided at the Visitor Centers and the signs at the overlooks and trailheads. But much more could be done. We already mentioned that many of the parks could do more on recycling. We would also like to see the NPS transition quickly to all electric vehicles and buses, and to power its buildings with solar power. It should also have fast chargers at all the Visitor Centers and overnight chargers at all the lodges inside the parks. The visibility and health of many of the parks have been harmed by air pollution—as noted in signs at parks such as Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. The NPS should do its part to implement solutions to those problems by electrifying its own operations and encouraging visitors to do the same.
On the larger issue of converting our cars to electric vehicles, we would offer a few thoughts for our fellow Americans. First, we hope our little adventure has helped to show that EVs are ready for prime time—that if we can to go to all the National Parks, many of them in very remote locations, you can go anywhere in an EV. We also hope that the information we have provided on our experiences along the way with charging—which seems to be one of the big issues causing many people to hesitate to consider buying an electric car—will help to change people’s views. Information is critical in this transition, like any other, and there’s a lack of information or even misinformation out there.
Accurate information on the benefits of electric vehicles is important because we really need to make the electric transition as soon as possible. In fact, CO2 levels are already dangerously high, and any new gasoline-powered cars bought today will continue to make the problem worse for 10-20 more years. For the sake of a healthy planet for our children and their children, we really can’t afford to do that.
The great thing about our free enterprise system is that it is incredibly efficient at responding to consumer demands, and then rapidly producing things to meet those demands—the current temporary supply-chain disruptions notwithstanding. In that system, we vote with our dollars, and the auto companies will only get serious about converting all their models to electric power when customers come into the showrooms and say, “I love this car, but does it come in electric? Because that’s the only kind of car I’ll consider buying going forward.” When that happens, everyone will be amazed at how fast the auto companies and all the associated suppliers will shift over. And when that happens, we will all be amazed at how much better America and the planet will be with a clean, abundant electric energy system.