Greetings from Crater Lake National Park

In 2009, my wife Terry and I visited a financial planner who turned out to be more of a life planner than financial planner. Mary’s comment was “how can I create a financial plan for you if I don’t have any idea how you would like to live? What is it that you would like to do, be and have during the remainder of your time on earth?” The first step to life planning, she said, was to determine what was truly important to us.

After carefully evaluating our “what’s important” list and what we’d like to do, be and have, Terry and I determined that spending more time with family and friends was very high on the proverbial “bucket list.” Another item that took high priority for us was to visit more of our country’s national parks. That summer, we began our goal of visiting all 59 of the country’s major parks.

After completing our 42nd park visit (Crater Lake) in 2013, I said to my son Charlie, an artist and board game designer, “Son, I would like you to create a tabletop board game in honor of our country’s incredible parks.” He loved the idea and began creating the family-friendly game Trekking the National Parks, which was published at the end of 2014.

Terry and I have 4 more parks to complete our Life Plan goal of trekking about all of our nation’s 59 natural cathedrals; however, we relive our adventures and look forward to our next trek every time we sit down to play our son’s game with our friends and with our family!

Sincerely,
John Binkele