[My sister Rosemary Cruz and I] took our very first trip in October 2020, so it was the height of the pandemic. We were trying to find ways of being able to connect and spend time together but do so safely, [so] we decided to go to the Grand Canyon.
We thought it was just going to be a one-and-done thing. We went [to the Grand Canyon], and we were hooked and loved it. Then we decided, ‘What if this was our life goal? What if we find a way each year to visit a couple parks?’
A lot of these trails can be really remote, especially for canyoneering, so you don’t have access to Wi-Fi or anything like that. And so, that’s really [how it] started—as a way to … keep in touch with my sister and just disconnect while being really present.
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Olympic National Park is really beautiful, and the best canyoneering spots are in Utah. But if I had to pick a favorite [national park], it’d be Grand Teton. Our next park that we want to be able to visit is Yosemite; we want to do the Half Dome [hike].
[Hiking and canyoneering are] so mentally demanding, but it’s pretty [scenery]... You get to be active and then test your own boundaries in a different way. And honestly, to be able to do that, you have to test your own mind, right?