Trekking The National Parks 2nd Ed. Review
Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Second Edition Review
Introduction
Hello adventurers and board game aficionados! Today, we’re trekking through the wild and wonderful world of Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Second Edition. From experienced hikers to those who prefer adventures from the comfort of their living room, this game promises to bring the beauty and excitement of America’s national parks right to your table.
Game Overview
Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Second Edition is a family-friendly board game designed by Charlie Bink and published by Underdog Games. It’s inspired by the award-winning book “Trekking the National Parks” by the Bink family. This game allows players to explore different national parks, collect trail stones, and earn points by completing various objectives. With beautiful artwork and engaging mechanics, it’s a game that appeals to both casual players and hardcore board gamers.
Components
The game comes with a stunningly illustrated board depicting the United States’ national parks, a set of colorful player pawns, custom dice, park cards, and trekking cards. The component quality is top-notch, making you feel like you’re holding a piece of nature in your hands. The second edition has improved artwork, more durable components, and refined rules to enhance the gaming experience.
Fun Fact: The game includes a miniature of the Bink family’s dog, which can be used as a token in the game. Talk about a fur-tastic addition!
How to Play
Setup
Setting up the game is a breeze. Lay out the board, distribute player pawns, and shuffle the park and trekking cards. Each player starts with a hand of trekking cards and a few trail stones. Place the first park cards on the board and you’re ready to embark on your adventure!
Turns and Actions
On their turn, players can move their pawns across the map, draw trekking cards, and visit national parks. The goal is to collect park cards and trail stones to score points. Each park card has unique requirements that players must fulfill, such as visiting specific park locations or collecting certain types of cards.
Pro Tip: Keep an eye on your opponents’ movements. They might be heading to the same park as you, and nothing stings more than being out-trekked by Grandma!
Strategy and Depth
While the game is easy to learn, it offers plenty of strategic depth. Players must balance their movements, manage their cards efficiently, and plan their routes to maximize their points. The different objectives and park cards ensure that no two games are ever the same, providing endless replayability.
Criticism Alert: Some players might find the game too reliant on luck due to the card draws. But hey, even the best-laid plans can go awry when Mother Nature is involved!
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Beautiful Artwork: The illustrations are a feast for the eyes and truly capture the beauty of America’s national parks.
- Engaging Mechanics: Easy to learn but offers strategic depth to keep players coming back for more.
- High Replayability: The variety of park cards and objectives ensure that each game is a new adventure.
- Family-Friendly: Suitable for players of all ages, making it a great addition to family game night.
Cons
- Luck Factor: The reliance on card draws might frustrate players who prefer more control over their strategy.
- Component Storage: The box could use a better insert for organizing the components.
Detailed Mechanics Analysis
The Movement System
Trekking The National Parks uses a card-driven movement system that distinguishes it from roll-and-move family games. Instead of rolling dice to determine how far they move, players play trek cards from their hand to trace routes across the map. Each trek card shows a movement value (1-3 spaces) and a color representing terrain type. Moving to a national park requires the player to trace a connected path of spaces matching the terrain requirements printed on the park card.
This system creates meaningful movement decisions that dice-based games cannot provide. A player holding three cards valued at 2, 1, and 3 can move exactly 6 spaces — but the specific route depends on which cards are played in which order, since different segments of the map require different terrain types. A forest-heavy hand enables movement through the Pacific Northwest efficiently but may leave a player stranded when attempting to reach desert parks in the Southwest.
Hand composition therefore functions as the game’s primary strategic variable. Players manage their trek card hand through draws from a face-up market (visible cards with known values) or from the deck (unknown but risk-free). The face-up market creates an information game: other players can see which cards are available and infer movement plans from observed draws. Taking a specific card from the market reveals directional intent, while blind draws from the deck maintain secrecy at the cost of reliability.
Scoring System Breakdown
The scoring system in Trekking The National Parks Second Edition awards points through three channels: park cards, trail stones, and bonus objectives.
Park cards are the primary scoring method. Each park card lists a point value (1, 2, or 3) that represents the difficulty of reaching and claiming that park. Claiming a park requires being physically present at the park location on the map and meeting any card-specific requirements (terrain-type hand composition). Once claimed, the park card is added to the player’s scoring pile and its points are locked in for end-game tallying.
Trail stones provide secondary scoring through set collection. Stones are placed on specific map locations at game start, and players collect them by stopping at those locations during movement. Stones come in four colors, and the end-game scoring formula awards increasing points for larger sets of matching colors: 1 stone is worth 1 point, 2 matching stones are worth 3 points, 3 matching are worth 6 points, and 4 or more matching are worth 10 points. This exponential scaling rewards committed collection strategies but creates opportunity cost against park-claiming activities.
Bonus objective cards, dealt at game start, provide secret scoring goals that reward specific achievements: visiting parks in a geographic region, collecting stones of certain colors, or claiming parks in a particular sequence. These hidden objectives add replayability by giving each player a unique strategic priority that influences route planning from the first turn.
The Second Edition Improvements
Component Upgrades
The Second Edition’s improvements over the original are primarily in component quality and visual polish rather than mechanical changes. The map board is larger and printed on thicker stock, with clearer trail markings that reduce disputes about which spaces connect to which. Trail stones are upgraded from painted wood to translucent acrylic, providing a more premium tactile experience. Park cards use matte lamination that resists fingerprints and accidental moisture damage.
The card illustrations received complete overhauls. While the first edition used photographs and basic graphic design, the Second Edition features original artwork that captures each national park’s distinctive character. Yellowstone’s card shows thermal features and bison, Grand Canyon’s card emphasizes the geological strata visible in the canyon walls, and Glacier National Park’s card highlights the park’s remaining glaciers and alpine lakes. These artistic choices make the park cards individually appealing and contribute to the game’s educational value by providing visual identification of each park’s notable features.
Rule Refinements
The Second Edition includes several rule clarifications that address ambiguities from the first edition. Movement rules now explicitly specify how terrain-type requirements apply when multiple routes to a destination are available. Stone collection timing is clarified relative to park-claiming actions. Turn order for simultaneous arrivals at the same park location is resolved by a clearly specified priority system.
These refinements do not fundamentally change the gameplay but reduce the frequency of rules disputes that disrupted first-edition sessions. For groups transitioning from the first to second edition, the adjustment period is minimal — the core experience is identical, with the refinements creating a smoother play experience rather than a different one.
Strategies for Different Player Counts
Two Players: The Chess Match
At two players, Trekking The National Parks transforms from a competitive race into a strategic duel. With fewer players contesting each park and stone, games become more deliberate and planning-oriented. Each player’s movements are more predictable (fewer competing activities distract attention), and blocking strategies (claiming parks that an opponent is approaching) become viable tactical weapons.
The two-player meta-game rewards route efficiency above all other factors. With minimal competition for specific parks, the winning player is typically the one who claims the most parks in the fewest turns, maintaining momentum through efficient hand management and optimal routing. Stone collection becomes a secondary consideration — the exponential scoring rewards of deep stone sets are less impactful when park-claiming efficiency generates comparable points with less opportunity cost.
Three to Four Players: The Competitive Sweet Spot
At three to four players, the game achieves its optimal competitive balance. Enough players create park-claiming competition to generate tension and blocking opportunities, but not so many that the board feels overcrowded or turn downtime becomes excessive. The face-up card market becomes genuinely contested — multiple players may want the same card, creating tactical decisions about when to draft aggressively versus when to draw blind.
Stone collection at this player count serves as a differentiating strategy. In a four-player game where park competition is fierce, a player who pivots to deep stone collection while opponents fight over contested parks can accumulate a scoring position that pure park-claiming cannot match. This strategic flexibility is what gives the game its replay value — the winning approach varies based on opponent behavior and card availability.
Five Players: The Chaotic Race
At five players, the game becomes faster-paced and more reactive. Park competition is intense, with multiple players converging on popular destinations simultaneously. Long-term planning becomes less reliable because opponent actions are harder to predict with more competing priorities on the board. The game rewards opportunism — taking the best available option each turn rather than executing multi-turn plans that may be disrupted.
Turn downtime at five players is the primary practical concern. Each player’s turn takes 1-2 minutes, meaning a full round requires 5-10 minutes — long enough that attention may drift for players who are not actively tracking competitor movements. Active engagement during other players’ turns (watching movements, updating mental maps of stone availability, adjusting route plans) mitigates downtime but requires sustained concentration that not all groups maintain.
Gift-Giving and Collection Recommendations
Who Will Enjoy This Game
Trekking The National Parks Second Edition excels as a gift for specific audiences. National park enthusiasts who also enjoy board games will appreciate the thematic integration and educational content. Families with children aged 10+ will find the rules accessible and the artwork engaging. Couples who enjoy competitive two-player games will discover surprising strategic depth beneath the family-friendly exterior.
The game also functions as a gateway to modern board gaming for people who associate board games with Monopoly and Risk. Its combination of beautiful artwork, manageable complexity, and recognizable theme (everyone knows what national parks are, even if they have not visited them) makes it approachable for non-gamers in a way that medieval fantasy or science fiction-themed games cannot match.
Collection Pairing Recommendations
In a board game collection, Trekking The National Parks pairs well with other travel-themed games that offer different mechanical experiences. Ticket to Ride provides a route-building comparison. Parks offers a thematically adjacent worker-placement experience. Tokaido provides a culturally distinct travel-journey game. These four games together create a “travel gaming shelf” that provides variety across multiple sessions without theme fatigue.
For groups that enjoy the stone-collection scoring mechanic, Century: Golem Edition and Splendor offer more focused set-collection experiences with different themes. For groups drawn to the educational aspect, Wingspan (bird education) and Terraforming Mars (planetary science) provide similar learn-while-playing experiences in other subject areas.
Final Thoughts
Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Second Edition is a delightful and engaging game that brings the beauty and adventure of America’s national parks to your table. Whether you’re a nature lover or a board game enthusiast, this game is sure to provide hours of fun and excitement.
The game supports 2-5 players aged 10 and up with sessions lasting 30-60 minutes. The board features 59 national parks across the United States, and the second edition includes 80 trekking cards and 36 park cards with updated photography and educational facts about each location. The point-scoring system rewards both visiting parks (worth 1-3 points based on difficulty to reach) and collecting matching sets of trail stones (bonus multiplier at game end), creating meaningful decisions about short-term gains versus long-term set collection strategy.
Grab your gear and start trekking!
Call to Action: Ready to embark on your own national park adventure? Click here to get your copy of Trekking The National Parks: The Board Game - Second Edition now and receive an exclusive discount! Happy trekking!
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