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A Complete 388: One Man Visits Every National Park Site

by Scott Kirkwood

(NAPSI)-Talk about goal-oriented. When Alan Hogenauer of Cerritos, Calif., visited Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument last fall, it was the final step in a journey begun almost 50 years earlier at the Statue of Liberty in New York. The mission? To visit every National Park system unit in the country.

Hop on the Internet and you'll find dozens of park lovers working feverishly to hunt down stamps from every park, but Hogenauer had a slight advantage over some: He spent a few years working for Trans World Airlines and he's now an associate professor and director of the center for travel and tourism at Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles--this stuff is his job. But he still had to pay his own way more often than not and he logged a lot more miles on the road than in the sky.

Even after all those trips, Hogenauer says he doesn't have a particular favorite park or even a favorite theme. "That's what made this such a fascinating project--letting other people select what they find interesting and then having a good team interpret it," says Hogenauer. "Would I have personally sought out a place like Nicodemus, the black village in central Kansas? No, I wouldn't have ever known it was there, but it's an absolutely fascinating place. I've learned a lot about black history and women's history and I'm sure Latino history will become more prevalent in the parks as the population of our country changes."

Hogenauer acknowledges that the interpretative aspect of the parks is his favorite part of every visit: "If there's a visitor's center I want to look at it, if there's a film I want to watch it, if there's a placard I want to read it."

Clearly this is a man who is a bit obsessive. His personal Web site tracks each of his 366 travel-related goals, from visiting all 131 North American telephone area codes designated by AT&T, to visiting some point worldwide whose name begins with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet and consuming a McDonald's menu item in every country in which it operates. Hogenauer even made a pilgrimage to the offices of R. R. Donnelley, the Lancaster, Penn., company that prints maps and pamphlets for each park, just to let them know he appreciated their efforts.

Because he's had the chance to see the parks over the course of the last few decades, Hogenauer has a unique perspective on the evolution of the parks in that time and his observations mirror the goals of NPCA's advocacy work, including the changes in the visitor experience.

"There's more of a detachment now," Hogenauer says. "You go in to the visitor's center, you watch a movie, you push a button, you don't ever talk to anybody--you can literally go to Yosemite and not see a ranger during your entire visit."

Even so, Hogenauer still believes the incredible value of the parks isn't being experienced and appreciated by nearly enough people.

"Here's this incredible institution, and the Park Service does so little to publicize it directly, beyond the Internet, which is such a passive vehicle-no one's going to search for Aniakchak Crater, per se. They're going to have to find it on their own," he says. Yet, at the same time, commercial interests with much smaller budgets are focusing on branding and messaging; many tourist traps in the shadow of the parks do a better job of publicizing lesser attractions with fliers in hotels and rest stops.

"When I was teaching back East, I did some research on folks who were taking the Statue of Liberty ferry and only about 20 percent of them knew they'd been to a national park unit when they left," says Hogenauer. "You could say, 'Does it really matter?' but it does, because that's where your public support comes from, that's where your brand identity comes from-if you've gone to see the Statue of Liberty and you don't even know whom to give credit to, you end up crediting the French for donating it rather than the Park Service for maintaining it, and that's a real shame."

Reprinted with permission from National Parks magazine. Copyright 2005, National Parks Conservation Association. Visit the National Parks Conservation Association online at www.npca.org to help plan your visit to a national park and learn more about America's National Park System.

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