November #FindYourPark Challenge - Last for #NPS100

Edit: As the week of The Photo Challenge drew to a close, we decided, with the help of over 20 Twitter friends, that there was more to be thankful for! So we have partnered with @PublicLandLvr on Twitter and extended the gratitude for one more week. Be sure to check out the added categories below!

This year was the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. This monumental occasion was celebrated in thousands of ways by millions of Americans. We chose to make a list of 20 NPS sites that we wanted to be sure to hit in a reasonable fashion, and have pretty much stuck to it. We traveled from South Dakota to the Southwest for 12 days, stopping in at 9 NPS sites along the way (almost all were National Parks). On that trip we had the opportunity to spend several days with extended family at two different parks.

Badlands feels like walking on Mars (at least we think so)!

Later in the summer, we headed east to Wisconsin and Michigan. We stopped in at two more NPS sites on that trip and got to see more family and friends. The rest of this centennial year we will return to some favorites, and explore two more new sites before we ring in 2017.

Our point in this recap is to say how thankful we are for America’s public lands! During this month where we tend to reflect on those things for which we are thankful, being able to explore and adventure in the National Park Service system tops our list. We hope it is the tops for you as well. Therefore, our overall theme for this next photo challenge is Thankfulness.

This month will be the last time we host a #FindYourPark photo challenge in 2016. We are thankful (again) for all who have participated in sharing their photos and stories with us along the way. This challenge has no prizes beyond the sheer joy of seeing National Parks (from multiple countries!) in their awesome glory shared by our friends online.

To join in, please see our topic schedule below, then jump over to Twitter and watch for our daily tweet to start things off. If you do post, please be sure to tag #FindYourPark, #parkchat, and us, @naturetechfam. We don’t want to miss a single beautiful photo!

November 14th we’ll start off, and we will lead into Thanksgiving week (here in the US) for the grand wrap-up.