Trekking National Parks: Board Game Review
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Introduction
Hello, fellow adventurers! Today, we’re trekking through the wild world of Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Underdog Games Second Edition. If you love board games and have a soft spot for nature, this game promises an epic combination of both. Prepare for a scenic adventure where you’ll explore the most iconic national parks, collect stones, and maybe even learn a fun fact or two.
What is Trekking The National Parks?
Trekking The National Parks is a family-friendly board game where players face off to visit the most national parks, collect stones, and earn points. With stunning artwork, cool park cards, and a plethora of stones to gather, this game offers an immersive experience that will keep you coming back for more.
The Basics
In Trekking The National Parks, players race to visit different national parks by moving their pawns across a beautifully illustrated map of the USA. Each player starts with a hand of trek cards and collects stones as they travel. The goal? To earn the most points by visiting parks, collecting stones, and achieving bonus objectives.
Components
The game comes with:
- Map Board: A lovely map of the USA featuring all the national parks.
- Park Cards: Cards representing different national parks, each with unique artwork and trivia.
- Stones: Collectible stones that add to your score.
- Trek Cards: Used for moving across the map.
- Player Pawns: Cute little pawns that represent you on your journey.
Pro Tip: Don’t let your dog near the stones. Those paws are the real stone thieves.
How to Play
Setup
Set up the game board, shuffle and deal trek cards, and place stones on the map. Choose a starting park, and you’re ready to begin your adventure.
Turns and Actions
Each turn, players draw trek cards, move their pawns, and visit parks. The synergy between the cards and the map is where Trekking The National Parks shines.
Visiting Parks
Visiting parks is straightforward but strategic. Players must plan their moves and manage their cards to visit as many parks as possible and collect stones. Remember, strategy and a bit of luck will take you far!
The Scenic Journey
Educational Fun
One of the best parts of Trekking The National Parks is the educational element. Each park card comes with fun trivia, making the game both entertaining and informative. You might just learn something new about your favorite national park.
Funny Moment: During one game, I proudly declared I knew everything about Yellowstone, only to mix it up with Yosemite. The laughter echoed for hours.
Replayability
With multiple parks, trek cards, and bonus objectives, Trekking The National Parks offers endless replayability. No two games are the same, ensuring you’ll want to come back for more scenic adventures.
Expansion Alert: Keep an eye out for expansions that introduce new parks, cards, and challenges. Your national park adventure is about to get even bigger.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Immersive Gameplay: Feel like an adventurer as you explore the national parks.
- High-Quality Components: The board, cards, and stones are top-notch.
- Replayability: Multiple parks and objectives ensure endless fun.
- Educational: Learn fun facts about national parks as you play.
Cons
- Setup Time: The initial setup can take a bit of time.
- Luck Factor: Some elements of the game rely on drawing the right trek cards.
- Expansions Needed: To keep the game fresh, expansions are almost a must.
Strategic Depth Behind the Scenic Theme
Route Planning and Card Efficiency
Trekking The National Parks rewards efficient route planning — visiting multiple parks in sequence while minimizing wasted movement. The trek cards used for movement come in five colors, each representing a different terrain type. Moving to a park requires playing a specific combination of trek card colors that matches the terrain between the player’s current position and the destination. This means hand composition directly constrains available routes.
Experienced players approach hand management as the game’s central strategic pillar. Rather than pursuing the closest available park, they evaluate their current hand composition against the card requirements for multiple nearby parks and select the route that generates the most points per card spent. A player with three green (forest) trek cards and two blue (water) trek cards should target parks connected by forest and water terrain, even if a closer park through mountain terrain is theoretically available.
Card draw decisions compound this strategy. When drawing new trek cards, players choose between visible face-up cards (known information with specific color selection) and blind draws from the deck (unknown but avoiding the risk of an opponent drafting a needed visible card before the player’s next turn). Groups with competitive-minded players develop a meta-game around the visible card display: taking a card you need is valuable, but denying a card your opponent needs can be equally impactful.
Stone Collection Strategy
Trail stones are scattered across the map at specific locations, and collecting them requires physically stopping at those locations (spending a movement action). Stones come in four colors, and end-game scoring awards bonus points for collecting matching sets. The diminishing returns of set collection create a strategic inflection point: is the tenth stone of a color worth the movement investment when a single stone of a new color would begin a fresh set?
The optimal stone strategy depends on game length and opponent behavior. In two-player games where competition for stones is limited, pursuing deep sets (many stones of one color) maximizes scoring. In four to five-player games where stones are contested, breadth (many sets of few stones each) provides more consistent scoring because opponents are more likely to poach stones from a concentrated collection strategy.
Stone positions on the map also interact with park locations, creating natural route synergies. Some stones sit along popular park-visiting corridors, making them “free” pickups that add bonus points without detouring from the primary objective. Other stones sit in map corners or isolated positions that require dedicated detours. Mapping these synergies before the game begins (a quick scan of stone and park positions during setup) provides a significant planning advantage.
Park Card Valuation
Each park card awards victory points based on the difficulty of reaching and claiming that park. Parks in accessible central locations award 1 point, while parks in remote corners or requiring specific terrain sequences award 2-3 points. The critical nuance is that park card difficulty does not always correlate linearly with trek card cost — some 3-point parks sit along efficient routes that cost fewer trek cards to reach than certain 1-point parks positioned in terrain-heavy areas.
Evaluating park cards based on “points per trek card spent” rather than raw point value reveals hidden value in the park deck. A 2-point park that requires 3 trek cards to reach (0.67 points per card) is more efficient than a 3-point park requiring 6 trek cards (0.50 points per card), even though the latter awards more total points. This efficiency calculation becomes instinctive with experience and separates consistent winners from players who chase high-value parks without considering resource cost.
The Educational Dimension
Real National Park Information
Each park card in the Second Edition includes factual information about the real national park it represents: location, established date, key features, and a notable fact. This educational content is not merely decorative — it provides genuine geographic and ecological knowledge that players absorb incidentally through repeated play.
The park selection spans the full range of the National Park Service system: from heavily visited destinations like Yellowstone (established 1872, the world’s first national park) and the Grand Canyon (over 6 million annual visitors) to lesser-known parks like North Cascades (approximately 30,000 annual visitors) and Dry Tortugas (accessible only by boat or seaplane). This representation introduces players to parks they may never have encountered, expanding awareness beyond the handful of iconic destinations that dominate popular consciousness.
For families with children, the game provides a geography lesson disguised as entertainment. Children who play Trekking The National Parks regularly develop familiarity with US geography — park locations, state boundaries, regional terrain types — that transfers to academic contexts. Several homeschooling communities have adopted the game as a supplementary geography resource, using the park cards as starting points for research projects about specific parks.
Trip Planning Inspiration
The game frequently inspires real-world travel planning. Players who discover unfamiliar parks through gameplay often research those destinations, and the game’s attractive presentation of park landscapes creates positive associations that motivate visits. The publisher reports anecdotal feedback from families who planned national park vacations based on parks encountered during gameplay — a form of experiential marketing that benefits both the game’s reputation and the national park system.
Comparison with Other Travel-Themed Board Games
Trekking The National Parks vs. Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride shares Trekking’s map-based route-building gameplay but focuses on train routes rather than park visits. Both games appeal to similar audiences (families, casual gamers, geography enthusiasts) and occupy the same weight class (light-medium strategy). The key mechanical difference is that Ticket to Ride uses a destination card system that assigns specific route objectives, while Trekking allows players to freely choose their own park targets.
This difference creates distinct gameplay feels. Ticket to Ride generates tension through hidden objectives — players do not know which routes opponents are pursuing until completed routes are revealed at game end. Trekking generates tension through visible competition — all players can see which parks are available and which opponents are approaching. Both approaches are valid, and many collections include both games for variety.
Trekking The National Parks vs. Parks
Parks (2019) is the most direct thematic competitor to Trekking The National Parks. Both games feature stunning artwork inspired by national parks, both use resource collection as a core mechanic, and both target the family gaming audience. Parks uses a worker placement system where hikers move along a trail collecting resources, while Trekking uses card-driven movement across a map.
The production quality comparison favors Parks for individual component beauty (its Season cards and park illustrations are gallery-quality prints) while Trekking offers a more substantial physical experience through its larger map board and broader park coverage. Parks plays in 30-60 minutes with 1-5 players, closely matching Trekking’s timing and player count.
For collections with room for only one national park-themed game, the deciding factor is mechanical preference: Parks for worker placement enthusiasts, Trekking for route-planning enthusiasts. For collections with room for both, they complement each other well — Parks provides a meditative, artwork-focused experience while Trekking provides a more competitive, geography-focused experience.
Trekking The National Parks vs. Tokaido
Tokaido shares the travel-journey theme but transplants it to historical Japan’s Eastern Sea Road. Both games use a path-based movement system where players collect experiences (park visits in Trekking, scenic views and culinary experiences in Tokaido) along a route. Tokaido’s “furthest back goes next” movement rule creates a different strategic dynamic from Trekking’s card-driven movement, but the travel-and-collect core experience appeals to overlapping audiences.
Tokaido is more contemplative and less competitive, making it suitable for groups that prefer relaxed, experience-focused gaming. Trekking offers more direct competition through park-claiming and stone-collecting races, making it better for groups that enjoy friendly rivalry within a non-confrontational theme.
Final Thoughts
Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Second Edition is a fantastic addition to any board game collection, especially for nature lovers. Its immersive gameplay, high-quality components, and endless replayability make it a must-have. Just remember, strategy and a bit of luck will help you become the ultimate park trekker.
The Second Edition supports 2-5 players with sessions lasting 30-60 minutes. The map features 48 national parks across the United States, and the 104 trek cards provide diverse route options that reward both planned strategies and opportunistic play. At 2 players the game feels more strategic and puzzle-like, while 4-5 players introduces more competition for prime park locations and blocking opportunities. The Second Edition’s updated components include thicker park cards with matte lamination, revised scoring tokens in translucent acrylic, and a larger board with clearer trail markings compared to the first edition.
Criticism Reminder: While the game is incredibly fun, it’s not without its flaws. The setup can take a bit of time, and some elements rely on luck. But for those willing to embrace the adventure, Trekking The National Parks is an absolute blast.
It’s time to embark on your scenic journey!
More Gaming Adventures Await
If you love board games, be sure to check out our reviews of Marvel United: Multiverse or Adventure Tactics and CoraQuest.
Ready to Explore? Grab your copy and start the adventure!
