Picture This: A 4th grader’s take on three National Parks

Photos by Anna Van Devender unless otherwise stated.

Escaping the Southern Arizona heat in June is a Van Devender family tradition.  Driving to Yellowstone in Summer ’23 was by far the furthest road trip we’ve tried.  My husband and I were eager to share special places we knew from before kids and to soak up new views too.  Kid 2 just finished 4^th grade, so the free National Park pass we got in December was still vaild and beckoned us all.  How does a 4^th grader interact with nature, National Park-style?  Read on for his take on the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Yellowstone in Idaho and Wyoming, and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.

Taking pictures

“Click,” “Click,” “Click”.  An old V-Tech kids’ camera that used to entertain my boys with games and creating goofy videos got new batteries and a new life in Kid 2’s hands this summer.  Suddenly he wanted to choose his shots, zoom in, and show off his newfound techniques.  “Mom, can I show you my picture?” he asked from Desert View lookout at sunset, from Old Faithful geyser while it was still erupting, and next to the campfire as I gazed into the same vibrant flames. He was a bit disappointed when I insisted on watching the real deal instead of squinting at his tiny screen.  Undeterred, he continued to “click” on views he deemed beautiful as well as scroll back through pictures and memories in the car. 

Seeing and touching animals

My boys both adore animals, and missed our pets back home.  They also know full well that most wild animals are off-limits.  They got an unexpected animal fix our first night camping outside of Yellowstone: collecting earthworms!  I let their camp chores slide while they happily found the fat worms in soil seeping with recent rain. 

The next day they were excited to see bison, elk, even an eagle – all from the safety of our car.  Our family’s viewing wish list was completed nearly a week later when we snapped pictures of a mama moose and her big baby.  But satisfying the sense of touch?  Thank goodness for fur displays in visitors centers! Kid 2 called me away from the 3D (but “do not touch”) map so I, too, could sink my hands into the thick bison pelt on an interpretive cart at Canyon Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone.  His favorite part of the visitor center in Grand Teton National Park was a panel of multiple, hands-on fur samples.  He rattled off the similarities and differences among the animals represented, unphased by my noting the severe lack of fur in some places due to thousands of previous pets.  Soft vs rough, thin vs. thick, it all helped fulfill his need to connect with animals.

Collecting keychains

Both kids set souvenir goals before the trip: water bottle stickers for Kid 1 and National Park keychains for Kid 2.  Kid 2’s most memorable shopping experience was in Yellowstone’s Canyon General Store.  Soooo many keychains to choose from, plus he had anticipated this time since the day before.  He deliberated among several favorites, then decided on a colorful scene with a tiny metal bison to slide back and forth.  More than a passive decoration for his backpack, this keychain did tricks and told stories via my son’s lively imagination for many miles of our drive back to camp that night.  Road trips do entail a lot of driving, after all.

Learning and teaching

The teacher in me considered making activities and checklists to encourage learning – and decided to not worry because A) I wanted to relax, and B) Oh boy was Kid 2 learning!  Our first night of the trip, he was in awe of the starry sky above our Grand Canyon Desert View campsite, and invited me to lay on a flat rock next to him for the best view.  He’s also the one who urged the whole family up Desert View Watchtower, where we learned about history above the rim while gazing at deeper history below. 

In Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone, he animatedly pointed out each new thermal feature (title image), and was able to name many of them because like a puppy dog he went ahead and came back multiple times to compensate for my slowness.  That same afternoon, despite having balked at a second walk, he was enthralled with the complex and colorful depths of Excelsior Geyser and the ancient story of algae mats in Grand Prismatic Pool.  We all were.  Upon novel sights for adults and children alike, I treasured our family’s shared learning and imagining. 

Purely playing

In camp when not hunting worms, on trails through woods and meadows, on a rocky beach with the magnificent backdrop of the Grand Teton range – Kid 2 was at home if he could wave a stick around and purely play.  He did not like that I sometimes interrupted to tell him to brush his teeth or to not run ahead next to a canyon.  He did make it clear through his frequent full-body movements that playing became more important than sight-seeing or animal-spotting as the road trip progressed. 

A storyline began in our Yellowstone KOA and petered out in Salt Lake City on our route home: an epic imaginary war involving octopi, crabs, and otters, then seagulls, pelicans, snails, whales, and more.  A sturdy cottonwood, accompanied by rocks and driftwood logs, became the boys’ shared, prized base.  The occasional wake from a passing ferry on the real water of Lake Jenny was to them a rising ocean tide, the imagined scale more present to them than the technical cause I tried to explain.  The National Parks provided a humongous playground. 

Touching water

We are a family of desert rats, drawn to water we can feel, confirm, rejoice in.  At the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River was far below.  In Yellowstone, the water we came to see was too hot to touch, and the swollen creek in our campground too precarious to play in.  Trust my 4^th grader to find a way to touch water anyway.  “It’s amazing how fast it can go from boiling hot to cold droplets!” he reported on the boardwalk in Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone.  He had watched a small erupting geyser that was splashing a tour group, then walked towards the falling water as the adults hurried away.  The geyser and his method of learning were both pretty cool. 

Similarly, he and his brother enjoyed positioning themselves – still safely on the trail – where warm steam puffed out of pools large and small.  

An especially memorable water encounter occurred while playing, not sight-seeing.   Our family had relaxed at Jenny Lake for a couple hours when “Plop!” Kid 2 slipped off a rock into the cold water.  He was relatively uninjured and good-natured about pausing the game to find dry clothes and lunch back at the car. 

Memories and motivations

“I have two souveniers – the bruise where I fell in the lake and the scrape from when I fell off the log!”  reflected Kid 2 cheerfully on the way home from our trip to three national parks.  Plus pictures transferred to the computer – where we comfortably viewed them together at home.  And keychains on his backpack, and a bonus Billy the bison magnet on our fridge.  For my 4^th grader a month before 5^th grade, the National Parks also meant sensory-rich discoveries, special places to play, and memories that he just might value enough to share with the next generation.