Updated June 16, 2026 11:15AM
Trigger warning: This article mentions sexual abuse. If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline toll-free from anywhere in the U.S. at 1-800-656-4673.
When Brad Ryan first convinced his grandmother, Joy Ryan, to leave her small hometown of Duncan Falls, Ohio, and see the country, neither imagined the journey would captivate millions. What began as a grandson’s attempt to make up for the adventures his grandmother never had—at age 85, Grandma Joy had never seen a mountain—became one of America’s most beloved travel stories: an octogenarian visiting mountains, oceans, and deserts for the very first time.
When Outside first introduced readers to the pair in 2019, Joy—then 89 and still marveling at landscapes of 29 national parks she’d never dreamed she’d visit—had just gone viral with 2o,000 likes and over 1,000 comments (@grandmajoysroadtrip). On August 4 of that year, their journey exploded into the national spotlight when a photo shared by Acadia National Park showing the pair with their arms stretched triumphantly toward the Atlantic Ocean grabbed national attention, turning Brad and Joy into ambassadors for discovery at any age.
Now, having completed their quest to visit all 63 national parks and inspired countless travelers along the way, Brad has written a new book, Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing, One National Park at a Time. While readers may expect another feel-good tale of intergenerational travel, the book exposes something Instagram images never could: a poignant and often painful reckoning with family trauma, grief, and the wounds that shaped the Ryan family long before the duo ever set foot on a trail.
“It’s not a book about ‘are they going to make it to all 63 U.S. national parks?” Brad tells Outside. “The book is about the underlying ‘why.’ Why were we going to all of the U.S. national parks?”
Grandma Joy’s Quest to Visit Every National Park
As it turns out, that “why” was far more complicated than his parents’ divorce, which had had estranged Brad and Joy for years before their first reconciliation trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2015. In Grandma Joy and Me, Brad alleges that his father never accepted his homosexuality, a rejection that he says fueled years of emotional abuse. Joy, meanwhile, carried her own hidden scars. One of her three sons died after battling drug addiction. More devastating still was a secret she had buried for decades: as a child, she was sexually abused by her grandfather. Like many members of the Silent Generation—children of the Great Depression noted for traditionalist, conforming behaviors—Joy survived by compartmentalizing her pain, tucking away unbearable memories, and carrying on.
What Brad’s growing social media audience didn’t realize was that the road trip was never just about seeing national parks. From the beginning, Brad hoped the long hours in the car might do something years of family silence had not: get his grandmother talking.
Joy admits there were moments when she felt cornered.
“When we were cooped up in the car, there was no way to get away,” she says with a laugh over Zoom. “It was either talk or else.”
And talk they did. Mile after mile, conversations that had been avoided for decades became impossible to outrun. They discussed Brad’s father’s infidelity, his uncle’s addiction-fueled crimes, and painful memories of the physical abuse Joy watched her father inflict on her mother. Some revelations were shocking. Others were heartbreaking. All of them forced both grandmother and grandson to confront parts of their family history they had long tried to leave behind.
“There were a lot of things that were very awakening and surprising,” Joy says. “And some things made you sad and you wish they never happened.”
“I was putting her on trial in a way,” Brad admits. “It was subconscious, but I was putting her on trial for the shortcomings of my father.”
The Power of Nature to Heal
If the difficult conversations threatened to pull them apart, nature had a way of stitching them back together. The national parks became both confessionals and refuge. After hours spent unpacking fraught memories, the landscape would intervene, reminding them why they had set out together in the first place. There was the time a moose charged them in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Or the day Joy spotted a couple tumbling down a towering dune at Great Sand Dunes National Park and, without hesitation, decided to throw herself down the sand after them.
After years of chasing a finish line that once seemed impossible, Brad, then 42, and Joy, then 93, were just eight days away from visiting their final stop—the National Park of American Samoa—when the past came rushing back. Brad learned that his estranged father was dying in a Louisiana hospital. Everything told him not to go, but before he knew it, he and Joy were crossing state lines to, ironically, a state without a congressionally designated national park to say their farewells.
Standing beside his father’s hospital bed with the man who had caused him so much pain, intubated and unresponsive, Brad did something he never could have imagined. He laid down years of anger and spoke from a place of grace.
“Hey, Dad, it’s Brad. I’m here. Grandma Joy and I are headed to our last national park next week in American Samoa.” he said. “She’s about to break a world record, and Good Morning America is going to be there to cover it. Can you believe that? And I want you to know that you’ll be there with us too.”
The words represented a forgiveness neither simple nor sudden. It was a peace forged over years and more than 100,000 miles on the road with Joy—a hard-won understanding that healing does not require forgetting, only a willingness to stop carrying the weight alone.
And that’s the message behind the book.
“It’s a journey of healing, one national park at a time. It wasn’t a journey of being healed,” Brad says.
The Next Quest: Visit Every Continent Together
The finish line, it turns out, was never really a finish line. After visiting all 63 national parks, Brad and Joy simply aimed higher. Their next quest is to set foot on every continent together. So far they’ve traveled to Kenya and South Africa, Antarctica, Iceland, Ireland, Canada, Ecuador and the Galápagos, and Chile and Argentina. Only Asia and Australia remain.
Joy, now 96, has every intention of checking Asia and Australia off the list this fall. And if there’s one thing she hopes people take from her journey, it’s that age is a poor excuse for staying home. The adventure you think you’ve missed may still be waiting for you.
“When you read our book, it’ll stir things in your mind—I should’ve done this, or I should have done that,” she says.
Brad remains in awe of his grandmother—of her resilience, her curiosity, and her unwavering decision to keep moving forward in spite of life’s setbacks. “You don’t have to be hiking a mountain, or rappelling down a waterfall to feel like you belong in the great outdoors because we’re all from nature and we all belong to it,” he says.
It’s a fitting philosophy for a woman who didn’t see her first mountain until her eighties, then spent the next decade proving to millions that adventure has no expiration date.
Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing, One National Park at a Time released June 16. For book tour dates, find more information at @grandmajoysroadtrip.
