Done! Woman, 93, grandson complete goal of visiting all 63 US national parks

A 93-year-old Ohio woman and her grandson completed a seven-year quest to visit all 63 U.S. national parks.

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Joy Ryan, and her grandson, Brad Ryan, visited the National Park of American Samoa on Monday, completing a quest that began in their hometown of Duncan Falls, Ohio. Completing the trips made Joy Ryan the oldest person to visit every national park.

The couple embarked on their final trip on Saturday, Brad Ryan told “Good Morning America” via email.

Joy and Brad enjoyed a two-day layover in Hawaii before taking a plane to Pago Pago on Monday.

“Three flights and nearly 17 flying hours were required before we touched down in American Samoa on Monday evening,” Ryan told the television show.

In an Instagram post, Brad Ryan said that he and his grandmother “defied erroneous assumptions about the limitations of aging.”

“It was the greatest privilege of my life to be in the driver’s seat for Grandma Joy’s Road Trip,” Brad Ryan wrote.

Brad Ryan got the idea after his grandmother said she regretted not having traveled more when she was younger, CNN reported. They took their first trip to the Great Smoky Mountains in October 2015, according to the cable news outlet.

The duo has been documenting their epic trips on their Instagram account since 2019. By June 2019, they had visited 29 national parks, according to a GoFundMe page they originally set up to help cover traveling expenses.

“We defied financial and logistical constraints. We even defied a pandemic,” Brad Ryan wrote. “And you might have noticed that I accidentally made Grandma Joy the superstar I always knew her to be.

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