93-year-old woman and grandson complete quest to visit all 63 US national parks

(Gray News) – A 93-year-old woman and her grandson recently completed a seven-year quest to visit all 63 U.S. national parks.

Joy Ryan and her grandson Brad Ryan documented their adventures on Instagram through @grandmajoysroadtrip.

The pair hit their 63rd national park together this week, visiting the National Park of American Samoa, according to a post on Instagram.

“Grandma Joy made history today as the oldest living person to visit every U.S. National Park! What more can I say? It was the greatest privilege of my life to be in the driver’s seat for Grandma Joy’s Road Trip,” Brad Ryan wrote in the post, showing a photo of them holding official certificates from the National Park Service.

Brad Ryan made it his mission to take his grandma to all U.S. national parks when she told him she regretted how few trips she took in her life, CNN reported.

Grandma Joy and her grandson started their adventure by visiting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in September 2015.

It took them four years to visit 29 of the national parks, according to Brad Ryan.

He created a GoFundMe in 2017 to help finance travel to the remaining parks on their checklist.

“Your generosity has fueled my dream to give Grandma Joy access to the great outdoors she didn’t experience in her first 85 years of life,” Brad Ryan wrote.

The fundraiser helped the pair defy financial and logistical constraints along their journey.

“We defied erroneous assumptions about the limitations of aging,” Brad Ryan wrote on Instagram. “We even defied a pandemic. And you might have noticed that I accidentally made Grandma Joy the superstar I always knew her to be.”