A 96-year-old woman who didn't see a mountain until she was 85 is coming to Denver this week to talk about the seven-year, 100,000-mile journey that took her to all 63 U.S. national parks with her grandson at the wheel. Joy Ryan and Brad Ryan will appear at Tattered Cover on East Colfax Avenue Thursday, August 20, at 6 p.m., with tickets starting at $7.25, to discuss their new memoir chronicling a trip that began as an attempt to mend a fractured family relationship and turned into a nationwide phenomenon.
The tour stop comes just weeks after Simon & Schuster published the pair's 336-page hardcover, “Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing, One National Park at a Time,” on June 16, according to 98.5 KYGO. Publishers Weekly called the memoir a heartfelt tribute to nature and intergenerational healing, per the same report, and the book details the seven-year process by which Brad Ryan says he set out to reconnect with his grandmother after a period of family estrangement.
Brad Ryan, a wildlife veterinarian from Ohio, first took his then-85-year-old grandmother camping in the Smoky Mountains in 2015, kicking off a journey that eventually carried Joy Ryan to every national park in the country. The station's report notes that Joy Ryan received her first passport at age 91 and has since visited five continents, gaining millions of online fans along the way as their story spread.
A Milestone Completed at the Edge of the Map
The national parks quest wrapped up in the National Park of American Samoa, according to East Idaho News, where the pair officially finished their circuit on May 15, 2023, and park staff presented them with commemorative certificates and gifts. Joy Ryan became the oldest known person to visit all 63 U.S. national parks upon completing the trip, per that outlet's reporting. The final stop was a remote one: as AFAR reported, the National Park of American Samoa is the only U.S. national park located south of the equator, sitting roughly 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii and drawing only about 22,500 visitors in 2024, making it one of the least-visited parks in the entire system.
That kind of remote-park travel has become more common for the country's oldest visitors thanks to federal pricing built for exactly this scenario. Per the U.S. National Park Service, citizens and permanent residents 62 and older can buy a Senior Lifetime Pass for $80, or an annual version for $20, covering entrance to all 63 national parks and more than 2,000 other federal sites. Congress mandated that price update from a longtime $10 fee in legislation passed in 2016.
Record Crowds Fill the Parks the Ryans Already Conquered
The Ryans' journey has unfolded against a backdrop of surging national park attendance nationwide. Smithsonian Magazine reported that the National Park Service logged a record 331.9 million recreational visits across its sites in 2024, a 2 percent jump over 2023, with 28 individual park units setting their own visitation records that year. Against that surge, the Ryans' quiet, unhurried tour of all 63 parks over seven years stands out as something closer to a pilgrimage than a checklist.
Their Denver appearance lands at a bookstore with its own recent turbulence. Tattered Cover, founded in 1971 and long associated with bookseller Joyce Meskis, was acquired by Barnes & Noble in July 2024 following Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and a corporate restructuring under previous owner Bended Page. The East Colfax location where the Ryans will speak operates inside the historic Lowenstein Theatre, where the store relocated in 2006 and which now includes a dedicated event space seating roughly 100 people, according to Wikipedia.
Boulder Stop and What Comes Next
Before Denver, the pair appeared Tuesday at Trident Booksellers & Cafe on Boulder's Pearl Street, a shop established in 1979 as a Buddhist bookstore before adding an espresso bar in 1981 that made it Boulder's oldest operating cafe. Trident became fully employee-owned in 2020, giving the Colorado leg of the tour two stops at bookstores with distinct histories of their own.
The book tour also marks a pivot for the Ryans, who have already visited five continents together and are now preparing to add two more. Brad Ryan and Joy Ryan plan to travel to Thailand and Australia with Road Scholar, a nonprofit educational travel organization founded in 1975 as Elderhostel that now serves between 80,000 and 100,000 older adult travelers annually and operates in more than 100 countries after rebranding in 2010.
Brad Ryan's academic background helps explain the conservation and public-health threads running through the memoir. He holds a bachelor's degree from Miami University, a master's in mammalian biology from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and a combined DVM and MPH from The Ohio State University with a focus on veterinary public health, according to a profile from Gramercy Books. He now works as a wildlife veterinarian and outdoor advocate who has spoken publicly about LGBTQ+ inclusion in nature spaces.
