National Park Nomad Dave Gafney has eBooks available here for download. Print editions are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other outlets. Thank you for stopping by!

Write your text here...

Wanderings, Confessions of a National Park Nomad

Zion National Park

An Interpretive Road Guide

This book will serve as your interpretive guide to the magnificent Grand Loop Drive traversing the heart of Yellowstone National Park. You are about to experience one of the world’s greatest wilderness preserves. For 142 miles, the Grand Loop Drive not only travels through forests, meadows and mountains, but will take you through or by the Earth's largest concentration of geysers and geothermal features, one of North America's greatest wildlife spectacles, a petrified forest, the continent's largest high elevation lake and a canyon carved by the Yellowstone River so colorful that it left 19th-century explorers and artists speechless. When you make the effort to understand the natural and human history behind this magnificent wilderness, it's easy to conclude that the adage "truth is stranger than fictionn" must have been thought up with Yellowstone National Park in mind!

I was working a typical day job in Massachusetts, unmotivated and disconnected from what I wanted in life when I received a phone call that would change everything. It almost felt as if God had called and asked if I would like to try out heaven for a few months. But it wasn't really God; it was the chief naturalist at Zion National Park offering me a five-month seasonal position. That phone call led to 15 years of wandering around the United States, living and working as an interpretive naturalist in some of America’s most beautiful national parks including Zion, Yellowstone, Isle Royale, and the Great Smoky Mountains. I would also spend two seasons working in the breathtaking backcountry of Wyoming’s 2.4-million-acre Shoshone National Forest and Colorado’s majestic 2-million-acre White River National Forest. Interspersed with these seasons, were two very long hikes on the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails. These days, I find myself office-bound and living a more typical American life—indoors! But each and every day my mind drifts back to that period of outdoor adventures and to the truly incredible people that I shared those adventures with. I now remember that time as the high watermark of my life and I can honestly say that I loved almost every minute of my years as a seasonal national park interpreter and national forest wilderness ranger.

Towering vertical walls of colorful sedimentary rock surround you relaying simultaneously contradictory feelings of intimacy and overwhelming grandeur. For five seasons I had the privilege of serving as a ranger-naturalist, interpreting for the public the story behind the stunning beauty of Zion National Park. This eBook (illustrated with more than 40 wilderness images) can help you plan your visit or can allow you to experience a vicarious journey through one of America's truly great national parks.

Those who take the time to truly explore Zion can find that within and around this park there exists a truly remarkable diversity - in terms of both natural environments and in terms of opportunities for wilderness experience. Whether observing desert wildflowers at the lower elevations, hiking among the Douglas-firs and quaking aspens of the high country; whether being exhilarated by the wide-open vistas from the rim of a wilderness plateau or being overwhelmed by the towering walls of a claustrophobic backcountry canyon, it is possible to spend a lifetime here and never tire of the variety and diversity and beauty of this incredible national park.

Yellowstone: Grand Loop Drive Interpretive Guide