Stop 197: Man visits Glacier on goal to visit all National Parks

Mikah Meyer spent a recent weekend riding horses, hiking and stargazing in Glacier National Park.

While his activities are like many others who spent time in the Park, Meyer’s recent stop there was number 197 on a three-year journey where he plans to visit all 417 National Parks and monuments in the United States. If successful, he’ll be the youngest ever to see the 417 at 31-years-old and the first to do it in one continuous trip.

“Most people take three, four, five decades, the people who have done it,” Meyer said of others who have completed a similar goal. “[The trip] is allowing me to go on a horseback ride to Cracker Lake — stuff that in my wildest dreams I would have never imagined affording growing up. It’s allowing me to fulfill a dream that I never thought possible.”

The adventure of Meyer’s dreams spurred from a sad and sudden shakeup in his life 11 years ago. When Meyer was 19, his father passed away from esophageal cancer.

It was the first real confrontation with death for Meyer, and it drove home the idea that anything can happen at any time, regardless of how things have been planned out.

“This lesson that tomorrow is not guaranteed, so whether it’s people you want to spend time with or things you want to do. You can’t assume you’ll have till 65 or till 80,” he said. “It just totally changed my world-view, and this whole idea of ‘when you turn 65, then you can pursue your dreams that take more than two weeks’ vacation,’ and so I made it a goal that when I turned 30 I would do something crazy.”

The trip began at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. on April 29, 2016, the day Meyer’s father passed more than a decade before. If all goes according to plan — Meyer acknowledges it might not — he should return to D.C. on the same day in 2019, concluding the three-year journey.

Road trips were something special for Meyer and his father, and soon after his father’s passing he began a series of road trips that spanned his 20s.

Prior to starting the trip, Meyer had a small handful of parks under his belt already, Glacier National Park included.

However, because that first visit had been in the spring, he hadn’t made it past the Avalanche Lake parking lot on Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Meyer’s Montana adventures began with a rafting trip on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and a lift up to the summit of Big Mountain last week.

In the Park, Meyer took a full day to ride on horseback to Cracker Lake and a guided hike to Iceberg Lake the following day, both in the Many Glacier area. On the way back he got some stargazing in at Logan Pass to cap off the visit.

While the Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau set him up with a fine view at the Snow Bear Chalets in the Village at Whitefish Mountain Resort, Meyer said his life these days is far from luxurious.

He estimates that once every two months he gets to stay in a hotel or condo. The rest of the time, he’s living in his home on wheels — a van affectionately named “Vanny McVanface.”

One of the issues he gets while documenting his adventure on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook is a misunderstanding of how he’s putting the trip together.

Meyer’s planning, media and financial team consists of himself, and the majority of the funding comes from money he put away in his 20s while working as at a boarding school in Washington D.C.

Two small sponsors, Pilot Flying J and Passport To Your National Parks, also help with funding, as well as a donation page on his website.

“People like to make assumptions very quickly, I’ve learned,” he said. “It looks like a giant vacation, because that’s what people want to see on Instagram. The reality is, yeah, about eight months in I almost quit, because fundraising was going so poorly.”

Putting the next two years of the trip together is the task at hand currently, with the biggest challenges being the stops in more remote locations like Hawaii and Alaska.

Once he’s done, he’s hoping to turn his adventure into a coffee-table style photo-book filled with tidbits of information he gathered in his travels.

His mission after that is one of inclusivity, he said, and he hopes to address an outdoors industry that is slow in opening its arms to any and everyone as well as act as a role model for LGBT adventurers.

“When I started this journey I was really afraid of letting it be known that I was openly gay, but very quickly found out that the outdoors industry has a huge problem being inclusive,” he said. “It’s very hetero-normative, it’s very white. So I’ve really been working with some individuals and hopefully some companies on trying to make the outdoors more inclusive for the LGBT community, make them feel more safe and wanted.”

After Glacier, Meyer’s journey is taking him through the rest of Montana’s stops. First he’s going to Big Hole National Battlefield in Wisdom, before heading to the Grant-Kohrs Ranch in Deer Lodge. Then he’ll take on Little Bighorn Battlefield, Bighorn Canyon and Yellowstone before continuing his travels across the country.

To follow Meyer’s journey and view a map of his travels, visit www.tbcmikah.com or follow tbcmikah on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.