No one could have known when Brad Ryan’s parents divorced years ago that it would result in a long, record-breaking, heartwarming journey.
“There was some grievance that I was holding onto,” Brad says, recalling matter-of-factly his decade-long estrangement from his grandmother, Joy Ryan. He began letting go of that grievance when they ran into each other at a family wedding in 2008. “She was 80 and she told me she regretted never seeing a mountain in her lifetime. I’ve traveled around the world a little bit and when she told me that, it kind of jarred my heart.”
Brad and Joy have travelled the world together visiting national parks.
Joy lives in Duncan Falls, a sleepy town nestled against the rolling hills along the Muskingum River southeast of Zanesville, where she’s a longtime member of New Concord-based Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative. When they finally reconnected, Brad noticed she was suffering some health issues, and clearly needed a change.
Brad was in veterinary school when he took Joy, at the time 85, camping in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That was the beginning of an odyssey that grabbed national attention — and spurred his realization that something had been sorely missing in his life for years: his grandmother, Joy.
Inauspicious start
That first trip was rough. It was the first time Joy had ever slept in a tent, and she fell off the air mattress — twice. But it was perfect.
“Yeah, that didn’t bother me at all,” Joy exclaims with energetic defiance. “It was raining cats and dogs, but a little rain doesn’t hurt anybody.”
Undeterred by torrential downpours and mud, and inspired by their ascension to the top of the miles-long Alum Cave Trail, Brad wondered if she’d like to visit all 63 U.S. national parks. She replied with a phrase remembered from his youth: “Let’s give it a whirl!”
And so they did. Beginning in 2015, they began hitting more national parks. Zion, check. Shenandoah, check. Cuyahoga, Rainier, Denali, Yosemite, Everglades, Yellowstone, Badlands, check-check-check-check-check. You get the idea.
It took eight years to check them all off the list. The final one was also the most distant — they ventured the 7,000 air miles from Muskingum County to the National Park of American Samoa in May 2023.
They chronicled their adventures with plenty of cool photographs via their Instagram account, @grandmajoysroadtrip. Along the way their account attracted more than 107,000 followers.
Active participant
When Joy travels, she doesn’t simply sit in a seat looking out a window; Brad stresses that she gets involved. “I want people to really know what Grandma Joy is actually made of,” he says. And while Joy won’t come out and say she put her grandson to shame on the hiking trails, Brad isn’t bashful about spilling the beans. “If I stopped on the trail to take a picture of a butterfly, I’d look up and she’d be half a football field in front of me,” he says, laughing. “That’s true.”
There are more examples. Like the time when Joy, alone, rolled down a towering sand dune at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado. What else? “Well, we went whitewater rafting in Alaska,” Joy says, “and we went zip-lining at New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, and we walked the New River Gorge Bridge.”
In fact, she set the record by a decade as the oldest person to complete the zip-line course, which includes launching off 10 different platforms. The bridge is the third tallest in the U.S. and the longest steel span in the Western Hemisphere. A small wrinkle: Brad’s not so keen on heights. “I’m telling you, when we had to go underneath that bridge, it took him a lot of courage to do that,” she says. “They said, ‘Who wants to go first?’ and of course my big mouth — I said, ‘I’ll do it!’ and I forgot Brad had to go, too. He’s a pretty good guy.”
Gaining fame
The duo’s mission did not go unnoticed. In addition to Insta-fame, the Today show featured them in the Rocky Mountains National Park, and Rachael Ray surprised the pair with trips to national parks in Alaska. They twice appeared on David Muir’s America Strong, and twice on the Tamron Hall Show. They’ve been featured on CNN, on NPR, and in magazines and podcasts too numerous to count.
But once they finished their list, they realized they didn’t want to quit traveling together, and now they’ve gone international. After jaunts to the African nation of Kenya and to the Galapagos Islands (gifts from Hall and National Geographic), they’ve now set their sights on visiting all seven continents. Recent trips have included Ecuador and Chile — so check Africa and South America off the list, along with North America, of course.
“Right now we’re in the early stages of planning a trip to Australia and a fall trip to Antarctica,” Brad says. “That will be five out of seven continents.”
Joy says that everywhere she’s gone during her adventures, she’s felt at home. “As soon as you say, ‘Hi! How are you?’ strangers become friends for sure. That’s how everybody is all over the world,” she says.
Now 94, Grandma Joy has earnest advice: “If somebody asks you to go somewhere, do not say ‘No,’ because the next day you’ll regret it. If you don’t go when people ask, you can’t complain because you have to sit there in a chair on the porch.”
Give Grandma Joy a follow @grandmajoysroadtrip on Instagram!
