How not to be a tourist: National Parks edition

Photos are not your primary objective.

I love Instagram. It’s a great platform for showcasing your best photographs and crafting inspiring messages without a character limit. It’s also notorious as being a platform for bragging — it’s a constant effort to appear that you’re happy all of the time.

Well, life isn’t always perfect. And if your primary objective when entering one of America’s many mindbogglingly-beautiful parks is to get that one sick picture that everyone is going to be envious of, your trip has already failed.

A photo captures what a place looks like. A photo does not capture how you felt in that moment, a California condor that flew by too fast for you to get your camera out, the laughter you had with your travel companions while you weren’t focused on your phones, or the deep, rejuvenating breaths you took as you stood on the edge of something incredible, feeling every particle of oxygen in your lungs like raindrops on your skin. Not everything needs to be or can be shared.