Four years ago, Grandma Joy told her grandson Brad Ryan that she had never seen many of the most beautiful parts of the United States. Since then, he has fixed that by taking her on dozens of cross-country adventures.
Back in 2015, Brad was feeling burned out from veterinary school, so he decided to pay his grandma a visit in his Ohio hometown. As he told her stories of all the places he’d travelled to, he was heartbroken when she told him she’d never really been anywhere and hadn’t seen oceans or mountains. That’s when he asked her if she wanted to hike the Smoky Mountains with him, and Joy immediately said yes.
Since then, the duo have visited 29 different national parks all over the country, seeing everything from the Great Sandy Dunes in Colorado to the shores of Acadia National Park in Maine. Over the course of three and a half years, Brad and Joy have driven 25,000 miles through 38 states, and their adventures have had a huge impact on the young man.
“Seeing it through my grandmother’s eyes, who every morning wakes up and is thankful to be alive, has taught me how to live,” Brad said. “With her, I’ve had to slow down and see it in a different way, which has made it a lot more rich. I love my grandma so much, and it’s just really giving me a lot of peace that when she eventually does pass on, I can go back to these places and feel her spirit, feel connected to her, that she set her eyes on these same things.”
Brad documents all of their adventures on social media, and he hopes that their adventures will encourage other young people to spend more time with their elders.
“I want people who are younger to know, you aren’t too cool to hang out with your grandparents,”Brad said. “I think we’ve lost that as a society. There’s so much perspective and knowledge we stand to gain from our elders.”
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