She didnât get a passport until she was aged 91, but a year after becoming the oldest person to visit all 63 National Parks in the U.S., âGrandma Joyâ Ryan is embarking on a new global challenge with her grandson Brad Ryan, 42.
The intergenerational duo, who went viral with their in 2023, are now planning to travel to all seven continents in the world together.
âI donât have many years left, [so] you hop to it,â Grandma Joy, now 94, tells CNN Travel via Zoom. âIf you slow down, you donât get anything done.â
Grandma-grandson duo
The pair has already ticked off three continents, visiting Banff National Park in Canada last year to ârepresent North America well beyond just our own countryâ and travelling to Africa, visiting both Amboseli National Park and Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, in 2023.
Their most recent trip was to South America, where they travelled to Ecuador, spending time in the Galapagos Islands, as well as Chile.
âIt was amazing to see those huge tortoises,â Grandma Joy says of the trip. âThey could raise their shells up just like a convertible or something.â
While theyâre pretty inseparable nowadays, the grandma-grandson duo were actually estranged for around a decade due to a family rift that occurred after Ryanâs parents divorced.
After reconnecting in 2010, they began filling each other in on what had transpired in their lives during their years apart.
While recounting his previous adventures hiking the Appalachian Trail and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Ryan learned that his paternal grandmother âhad never set eyes on a mountain.â
âThat was one of her lifelong regrets,â he says. âHer travel had been limited to just a few road trips to Florida with my grandfather when he was alive.
âHer view of the world was always what she saw on the Travel Channel or just on the news.â
That conversation stayed with him.
A few years later, Ryan, who had been experiencing some challenges while at veterinary school, decided to take a weekend road trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, and asked Grandma Joy if sheâd like to join him.
âI just needed to get away and I wanted to do something that would fill my cup,â he explains.
Seed of joy
Thankfully his grandmother jumped at the chance of going on an adventure with her grandson and the pair headed off together in September 2015.
âAt 85, she saw her first mountain, climbed her first mountain and went camping for the first time and fell off the air mattress a couple of times and didnât complain,â adds Ryan.
While he admits that he assumed that travelling with an elderly person might âspoil the fun a little bit,â Ryan quickly found that this wasnât the case. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
âIt made the experience of being in the great outdoors much richer,â he says, explaining that having to move more slowly meant he was able to take everything in in a more meaningful way.
âI wasnât rushing through the places that I was visiting. I was really taking the time to appreciate smaller details.
âThe lens through which she is seeing the world is very different to most people my age. She doesnât visit a place thinking, âWell, Iâll be back again,â so thereâs more presence.â
According to Ryan, that first trip âplanted a seed of joyâ inside him that had been missing, and he was thrilled to see how much Grandma Joy had enjoyed the experience.
Keen to keep their adventure going, the pair hatched a plan to travel to the other 62 U.S. National Parks together.
Such a challenge would be a huge feat for most hikers, let alone an elderly woman with limited hiking experience, so they decided to take their time with it.
âIt took us nearly eight years to do it,â says Ryan, explaining that they tend to take two-month long breaks between each trip. âBut she made history last year.â
Of the many places that they visited together during that time, Grandma Joy was particularly struck by Old Faithful, one of the almost 500 geysers in Yellowstone, as well as Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
âIt was a long haul but I enjoyed it,â she says. âAnd we met so many nice people along the way.
âBeing an old person sitting on the porch, this makes you feel like, âWell maybe I did accomplish something.â So I enjoyed every bit of it.â
Life-changing experience
The quest was also life changing for Ryan, as he was able to spend days on end hiking, camping and driving with his grandmother, who has been a widow for 30 years. Ryanâs father, who had been Grandma Joyâs last surviving son, passed away in 2023.
âShe shattered my preconceived notions about what it means to be an older person,â he says.
âBecause she wasnât just sitting in the passenger seat looking out the window, although we did that too.â
Ryan goes on to describe how Grandma Joy went ziplining at New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia and whitewater rafting at Wrangell St. Elias National Park in Alaska at the age of 91.
âI think we all have this sort of innate dread about getting older,â he says. âAnd we think about the limitations instead of the possibilities. She [Grandma Joy] reminds us of the possibilities that still exist.â
After reaching their final stop, the National Park of American Samoa in the South Pacific, last year, they were asked what they planned to do next, and eventually decided on attempting to travel to every continent in the world.
âThat seems like a doable goal,â says Ryan. âSo thatâs what weâre doing now.â
The pair, who say theyâre âstill recoveringâ from their South America trip, are currently back in Ohio, but plan to visit Australia later this year.
While Down Under, they hope to âhop over to Asiaâ and possibly visit the national parks of India, or travel to Borneo âto see the orangutans.â
âWe have a soft spot for the furry great apes of the world,â adds Ryan.
Once theyâve ticked Australia and Asia off their list, they hope to travel to Europe, where they have many friends.
âAntarctica is the one thatâs like the wildcard,â admits Ryan. âWe would love that, but getting there is challenging.
âIâd like to end big, and I think Antarctica would be the cherry on top of this adventure.â
The pair acknowledge that there are many people that wonât have the âeconomic meansâ to explore the world in this way, pointing out that they started their first challenge with just âa little bit of moneyâ and spent a lot of time eating ramen noodles.
However, theyâve since picked up various sponsorships, which has allowed them to continue traveling comfortably.
âWeâve been very fortunate,â adds Ryan.
After spending so much time on the road together, grandma and grandson have become closer than ever.
Intergenerational connections
âWeâre in each otherâs pockets all the time,â says Grandma Joy. âWeâve had all of these adventures, so thereâs something to talk about, thatâs for sure.â
Being able to share so many special moments with Grandma Joy has also meant that Ryan has been able to ask questions that heâs never had the opportunity to before.
âWhat Iâve come to learn is that we can free ourselves from future regret by making a choice to connect with older generations while theyâre still here,â he says.
While they clearly get on famously, the pairâs significant age gap has inevitably led to the occasional clash, especially when it comes to their different tastes in music.
âI tried to learn to enjoy his kind of music,â says Grandma Joy, who has three other grandchildren. âI canât figure out how he calls it music, but whatever.â
When asked what sheâs learned about herself through travelling with her grandson, she quips, âI guess Iâve got more patience than I thought I had.â
In the nearly 10 years since that trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Ryan has noticed a big change in Grandma Joyâs physical health, explaining that she was quite âwobblyâ in the beginning but has become a lot more capable.
âThereâs a lot of variability in terms of what people are up against at that age,â notes Ryan. âBut for some people, I think itâs a matter of being active again.â
He points out that he and Grandma Joy have âdone as long as 45 days on the roadâ together at times.
âThat certainly takes a toll on anybody, let alone somebody her age. I know if Iâm tired, she must be 10 times as tired.â
After climbing mountains, going on safaris and hiking through the wilderness, Grandma Joy has no plans to slow down, although she does enjoy stopping for a break every now and again.
âIâve got two new knees and Iâm going to have to get them replaced, I think,â she says. âTheyâve got too many miles on them.
âI donât have diabetes, and I donât have anything wrong with my heart. So really, Iâm in good shape for an old woman.â
When sheâs not travelling with her grandson, Grandma Joy sometimes does puzzles with her neighbour and watches local high school football games from her home in Duncan Falls, Ohio.
âI donât miss nothing,â she says.
Willing spirit
The pair have been chronicling their travels on their Instagram account, , and Ryan says that followers often make comments like, âMy grandmother would never do that.â
He stresses that their situation has only been possible because Grandma Joy has âa willing spiritâ and gets as much of a kick out of their travels as he does.
âEvery once in a while someone somebody says, âDonât you think you should wrap this up? Youâre putting her in compromising positions,ââ he adds.
âAnd thereâs no regret that comes from going out and remembering that your life is still happening right now.â
Reflecting on their previous estrangement, Ryan hopes that their story will show that âyou can go pretty far after forgiveness happens.â
âA lot of life happens in a decade,â he adds. âAnd our message is certainly that we should try to free ourselves from grievance and find grace for people when we can. Life is very short.â
As for Grandma Joy, sheâs enjoying making up for lost time, and now has several stamps in her first ever passport.
âI just take one step at a time, one day at a time, and thank the Lord every morning for giving me one more day,â she says.
âI try to be an optimist. The glass is half full, not half empty. And the people that you meet along the way lift your spirits.
âYou see people in worse shape than you, and I just think âIâve got a lot to be thankful for.â
âNot everybodyâs lucky enough to have a grandson thatâs willing to drag them around.â