Just a few weeks ago at the end of April, it was National Park Week, the annual week in which we celebrate ”America’s Best Idea.” And in normal times, people would flock to the 400+ places in our National Park System to hike, camp, volunteer, and generally celebrate their amazing diversity of stunning landscapes, wildlife, and history.
This year is an oddball because the world is in the middle of a pandemic. COVID-19 has shuttered our national parks and shooed us into our homes; and depending on local guidelines, your access to the outdoors has likely become very limited.
And even as things begin to reopen and guidelines are eased, your travel plans may remain on hold for a while yet. That national park trip might need to wait just a little longer.
So what could be a more relaxing way to “head to” one of our great national parks, without leaving your own home?
Coloring pages.
Designing Coloring Pages of Our National Parks.
I’m a huge fan girl of our national parks. I’ve been designing national park-inspired products for a few years here at Dear Summit, and I also donate a portion of my profits to the National Park Foundation - so the things I create directly support and protect those parks I love.
I’ve thought about creating coloring pages several times in the last few years. I’ve dreamed of designing a whole coloring book, filled with wonderful, minimalist illustrations of the amazing landscapes our national parks have to offer. But it has never worked out before because of one thing:
Designing coloring pages is a completely different kind of approach to art from what I’m used to.
It’s a whole new way of creating an illustration; rather than working with the completed image in my mind as my goal, I have the added task of making an image for someone else to finish for me - but to do it in a way that it’s still easy to tell what is supposed to be a tree or a mountain or a cloud, without too much detail, and obviously without any color.
It’s not easy!
At least it wasn’t easy for me.
I had tried and failed to create coloring pages in the past, but this time, I was determined to make it happen. (And now having an iPad Mini with the Procreate app and an Apple Pencil has definitely helped to make it a much more forgiving process than my previous attempts with pen and paper.)
To start out, I chose three parks which each hold a special place in my heart: Yosemite, Arches, and Great Smoky Mountains:
Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite is one of the first national parks I remember visiting. I grew up in Missouri, and when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I flew with my family out to California, where our vacation itinerary included stops at Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks. I remember the tent-cabin we stayed in being a little more rustic than my mom expected. I remember the towering granite cliffs of Yosemite Valley and the endearing antics of a trailside chipmunk (who was a little too comfortable around humans, in hindsight). Exploring Yosemite as a child laid a foundation for my love of nature, and I have been dreaming of going back ever since.
Arches National Park.
Arches was one of the first parks I visited as an adult, and also the first place I tackled a trail longer than a couple of miles. My dad and I hiked a 7-ish mile primitive trail through the park’s backcountry, taking us all over the otherworldly landscape of hot sand and towering sandstone formations and natural arches. Sidenote, we encountered a pair of barefoot hikers on that trail, and I decided to try it out for myself. I’m so glad I did! It was a hot day, but the sandstone was amazingly cool and comfortable on my bare feet. I was hooked. On the right terrain and in the right conditions, barefoot hiking is pretty awesome!
Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Great Smoky Mountains is the most recent national park I’ve visited (last September), this time with not only my own family of four (my husband and two young daughters), but also some of my extended family as well. We stayed in nearby Gatlinburg, TN, and enjoyed a few forays into the park to explore its valleys, trek through the forest to a stunning waterfall, glimpse a mama bear and her four cubs, and climb to its highest summit to gape in awe at the smoky mountains, rolling into the distance.It’s such a different park from its western cousins, but I can also see why it’s the most visited. There’s an alluring mystery in those mountains, and once you’ve been there, you won’t forget it.
And while we’re here, how about you?
What’s one of your favorite memories from a national park? And which park should I make into a coloring page next?
Share it in the comments on this post!
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This article contains some affiliate links. When you make a purchase through my link, I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Your support helps me keep posts like this coming!
*Note: if you were expecting free coloring pages, I was initially giving these away in 2020, but ultimately, this is my livelihood, and I put a lot of hours into designing these coloring pages, so I think it’s fair to ask a small fee for them now. Thanks for understanding!
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