I adopted Juno the husky-shepherd mix in June 2015. Since then, we’ve visited more than 30 U.S. states and 25 U.S. National Parks together.

As my mom jokes, she’s better traveled than most Americans –and a helluva lot cuter. 😉

I follow a lot of friends and online personalities who have plans to visit all the U.S. states or National Parks. It’s fun to have a goal in mind. And as my time in the tech world taught me, a good OKR should be quantifiable.

So, I’m speaking it into existence: Juno will be the first dog to visit all 60 U.S. National Parks. And because a good OKR is also time-bound, we’ll do it before I turn 30 on May 11, 2021.

It seems unlikely to me that Juno will actually be the first dog to do this. The Venn diagram of dog lovers and National Park lovers is basically a circle. But so far my Google searches haven’t turned up any other claims.

If it does turn out that another dog has already beaten her to it –tell me I’m wrong, Internet, since it’s what you do best!– then she’ll just be the cutest dog to do it. (Or the fluffiest, the youngest, or any other fitting superlative.)

There’s a nice divisibility to reaching all 60 parks by age 30, which brings me to the third quality of a good OKR: difficult, but not impossible. 60 by my 30th birthday means almost 15 new parks a year, averaging more than one new park a month, for the next 2.5 years. Ambitious, but not impossible.

We’ll hit the low-hanging, landlocked fruit first –we’ve already covered much of the western U.S.– then deal with the sea crossings and airplanes and quarantines required by the more far-flung parks, like Hawai’i and American Samoa. By the time we’ve hit the 50+ parks accessible to us by #RubySuetheSubaru, I figure we’ll either be so close to our goal that we simply must continue, expense and inconvenience be damned, or we’ll somehow have snagged dog food and adventure gear and travel sponsors who can help us out. 😉 (Hit me up, Ruffwear/Subaru/REI!!)

And if we don’t quite make it to 60? No worries. We’re going to have a blast along the way.

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Here’s a list of all 60 U.S. National Parks, with the ones Juno has already visited in bold. Eventually I hope to link each to a blog post (or at the very least, an Instagram caption) about that journey. Until then, you can follow along here or on Instagram at #journeyswithjuno. See you out there!

1. Acadia National Park
2. Arches National Park
3. Badlands National Park
4. Big Bend National Park
5. Biscayne National Park
6. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
7. Bryce Canyon National Park
8. Canyonlands National Park
9. Capitol Reef National Park
10. Carlsbad Caverns National Park
11. Channel Islands National Park
12. Congaree National Park
13. Crater Lake National Park
14. Cuyahoga Valley National Park
15. Death Valley National Park
16. Denali National Park and Preserve
17. Dry Tortugas National Park
18. Everglades National Park
19. Gates of the Arctic National Park
20. Gateway Arch National Park
21. Glacier National Park
22. Glacier Bay National Park
23. Grand Canyon National Park
24. Grand Teton National Park
25. Great Basin National Park
26. Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
27. Great Smoky Mountains National Park
28. Guadalupe Mountains National Park
29. Haleakala National Park
30. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
31. Hot Springs National Park
32. Isle Royale National Park
33. Joshua Tree National Park
34. Katmai National Park and Preserve
35. Kenai Fjords National Park
36. Kings Canyon National Park
37. Kobuk Valley National Park
38. Lake Clark National Park
39. Lassen Volcanic National Park
40. Mammoth Cave National Park
41. Mesa Verde National Park
42. Mount Rainier National Park
43. National Park of American Samoa
44. North Cascades National Park
45. Olympic National Park
46. Petrified Forest National Park
47. Pinnacles National Park
48. Redwood National Park
49. Rocky Mountain National Park
50. Saguaro National Park
51. Sequoia National Park
52. Shenandoah National Park
    
53. Theodore Roosevelt National Park
54. Virgin Islands National Park
55. Voyageurs National Park
56. White Sands National Park 
57. Wind Cave National Park
58. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
59. Yellowstone National Park
60. Yosemite National Park
61. Zion National Park