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SALT LAKE CITY—One Utah couple’s passion for national parks and adventure is fueling a six to twelve month long trip to visit all 59 national parks in celebration of The National Park Service’s centennial anniversary.
The genesis of the dream began after Madison and Cees Hofman spotted a mini Toyota motorhome traveling down the freeway three years ago.
“After we graduated, we wanted to plan sort of a glorified graduation trip, but then it evolved into something more than that,” Cees Hofman said. “We got the RV in September of 2014, but we were planning the trip even a couple of months before that.”
The couple garnered a mixed response from family and friends, after telling them about their plan. While most were excited about the proposed adventure, some still held reservations.
“Some of our good friends were hesitant to jump on board, or even saying that we were irresponsible. You should go ahead and go to graduate school they told us, or have babies, or other adult activities. So we got a cat,” Cees Hofman said.
Ultimately, Madison explained, they realized that there would never be an “opportune” time to make this journey.
“We just figured this was a perfect time. There is not ever going to a perfect time to chase your dreams. And that is something that we have come to accept. We made it the perfect time. We just made goals and went after them and made this a reality for ourselves,” she said. “We just had this idea, and it is just amazing how big things really can happen to you. Opportunities arise unexpectedly. Good things happen. If something like this can happen to us, I believe that anything can happen.”
Dreams are seldom achieved easily though, and a few times, the couple seriously considered scrapping the trip. After pulling multiple all-nighters, spending countless hours poring over maps and routes, renovating the RV, and balancing work and school life, even for adventurers like the Hoffmans, at times, the benefits didn’t seem to outweigh the costs.
“I remember a phone call with my dad at like 2 or 3 in the morning. I was stressing out about finals, I had to finish the RV before we were taking off to California, and there was business and work stuff that was crashing down,” Cees Hofman said. “I asked him if I should just bail out of this whole RV thing. He told me that I needed to evaluate what is most important, and if these things were important to me, that I just had to get tough and go for it, which is eventually what I had to do.”
Besides dealing with both the significant time and money expenditures, financial roadblocks were also substantial. However, living in an RV has proved to be significantly cheaper than renting, and because their RV uses solar panels for electricity, the couple has saved a lot of money. More notably though, they lucked out and attracted the attention of a few key sponsors to help subsidize the trip.
“We were pretty surprised that after the first round of cold emails we sent out, we actually got responses from companies. Yakima Racks was the first to respond to us, and then Chaco jumped on as our title sponsor. They are helping out with a lot of the cost. It was cool to receive that kind of validation from those big companies. Without the sponsors we could have made it happen, but it would have been a totally different trip. It would have been very logistically different and more difficult.”
Madison and Cees Hofman are documenting the trip extensively. After exploring the parks each day, the team comes back to the RV to edit and create content to put on their Ourvie website. The team does a blog post for every park they visit, highlighting the various people they meet and trails they explored while discussing various other highlights from the day. In tandem with the blog posts, the team also posts an Instagram daily.
“Every park will be totally documented and covered as much as we can. Our sponsor companies can recycle and create media from our own blogs. They just want to share our story along the journey,” Madison Hofman said.
The couple has been organizing an itinerary over the past couple of years. However, the trip layout doesn’t include a detailed hour-by-hour schedule of specific activities they want to do. Depending on the weather or the people they meet up with, the team wants to have the flexibility to make adjustments everyday. Madison Hofman is excited to travel to the Alaskan national parks, but Yosemite National Park is currently her favorite for several reasons.
“I grew up in the Bay Area, not too far from the park, and Cees actually proposed to me at Yosemite," she said. "So, that park is very special to me. I always have good memories from there. When I first entered the valley at Yosemite, I was just in awe of these incredible big walls, and it’s sacredness struck me. It is an inspirational place."
Cees Hofman has always been enthralled with the Utah national parks, particularly the southern Utah ones, but he is most interested in visiting the Florida parks, like the Everglades. He doesn’t really know what to expect, but is anxious to find out, he said.
The team has a very mature perspective on the trip, recognizing that in the upcoming months they will likely encounter great difficulty, but also learn from their varied positive —and negative experiences.
“No matter how much you think you are prepared for something, there is always going to be ‘the looming unknown.’ I think that failure is the No. 1 most scary thing, but I think that it’s also the No. 1 most exciting thing of the whole trip," Cees Hofman said. "The whole unknown nature of the whole trip could be like, 'This could be really awesome,' but it might be a lot harder than we think it is going to be.”
Ultimately, the team notes though, that fear and criticism is just what comes with the territory when coordinating and going on such an extensive trip.
“I think a lot of time people don’t go after their ambition because of fear or criticism or just different excuses, but you really just have to make it what you want it to be," Madison Hofman said. "I don’t want to sound cheesy, but you can realize your goals, and then go after them. You really can live your dreams. You actually can do it."
