NPS Unit Count: 79
Hey there Adventurers! We just started 2026, but I am just now catching up on my trips from 2025! First up was a spring break road trip the sidekick and I took to D.C. in March! This was a crazy trip idea to begin with. We drove. In one car – a Toyota Corolla. With two dogs. And we left Thursday morning and came back Sunday. The goal of this trip was to facilitate a #USBarkRangers meetup at the start of the Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. As we only had two days in town it was a short trip but definitely worth sharing!
The first morning in town we met up with a group of our crew at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. This is an NPS unit that has a Bark Ranger program and a neat Bark Ranger tag, which is why we scheduled an event at this location. This is a really neat area to escape to in D.C.! In summer, the gardens are gorgeous, but it was still quite cool in March so the park itself was not spectacular, but the meet up event was great! We had maybe 15 members and their dogs attend and we did some pack hikes and had a large group swearing in with the Park Ranger! So cute! Later we met up with another group of a half dozen or so members of our group for pizza before calling it a night.
The next day we got up early and met up with another large group at the MLK, Jr. Monument in the National Mall. Nicki and I got down there early to park and went to the FDR memorial first to get in some brief sight seeing. Afterward, we met up with our crew and went to the Cherry Blossom Festival location. This event is actually put on by the National Park Service and they did a big group swearing in for us as well! Super cute! The trees were just starting to put out the blossoms, so it wasn’t great for that, but the events were great for our group!
Afterward we actually met up with yet another group of people, some who were not part of either of the two previous events, down in the Potomac Park Area. We set up some chairs and socialized for a couple hours. Overall these were all super chill and fun events for our #USBarkRangers group! Because of the timing of things there was not a lot of D.C. exploring to be had…so I made a decision that I would be coming back. I didn’t really know it at the time, but I would come back just 6 months later, so stay tuned for that post!
This was the first of two official Bark Ranger Events we did in 2025 and I actually met up with another member to do Bark Ranger stuff over the summer. It was really amazing to actually get to do events with people from our amazing group! My next post is going to feature a sequence of parks in New Mexico including Colorado’s Mesa Verde, so stay tuned!
The Parks Adventurer 