Schaumburg toddler becomes youngest person to visit all 63 U.S. national parks

At 19 months old and with visits to all 63 U.S. national parks under her bib, Aarya Sharma of Schaumburg is ready to see more of the world.

Though Aarya may still pursue a Guinness World Record designation, documentation already suggests she’s the youngest person ever to visit every national park.

But according to her father, Akshay Sharma, and mother, Aparajita Rai, breaking a world record was never the point.

“Travel, in general, has made Aarya very curious and adaptable,” Rai said. “She realizes the world is much bigger than her day-to-day surroundings. It’s just built her confidence in how she responds to different places.”

The quest began with a trip to Gateway Arch in St. Louis in March 2025 when Aarya was barely 6 weeks old. And it ended on the last day of September this year at Acadia National Park in Maine.

Though she’s long shown deep fascination with the majestic sights before her eyes, the appreciation for nature has grown with her, Sharma said.

“The reactions are totally different now!” he explained. “It’s changed a lot. She runs all around the parks and can do little hikes. She says hi to each and every stranger she passes.”

Aarya also has eagerly learned to recognize park rangers ― the source of the 63 Junior Ranger badges she’s earned along the way.

An ingrained respect for nature even once led Aarya, with her limited language, to struggle to indicate that her family had accidentally dropped a sandwich wrapper at one site and brought them back to retrieve it.

With 33 parks already visited in June, Sharma and Rai felt confident the rest could be done by next year. But fortune allowed them to accelerate the schedule.

The last stretch included Dry Tortugas, Big Bend, Channel Islands and Acadia following an earlier trip to all eight Alaska parks.

Also, the chance for Aarya to be on some multigenerational trips with her grandparents as well was an opportunity not to be missed, Sharma said.

Though Aarya is her only child, Rai said mothers of other children her daughter has played with at airports and other places have remarked on the confidence of her posture, her balance for her age and the strength of her climbing abilities.

While under no illusions that Aarya was aware of what she was achieving in the moment, Rai said it’s probably slowly growing clearer in the aftermath.

“When she listens to us narrating those stories, I see that sense of understanding,” she explained. “’They’re talking about me, something I’ve accomplished.’ I tell her when you grow up you will see it wasn’t an easy thing to do.”

The fact Aarya’s parents first connected through their shared love of travel 12 years ago was what made possible the test of whether that lifestyle could continue with a child. Though they were prepared for the opposite, they were delighted their daughter reciprocated that enthusiasm.

They said everyone should raise their own child as they see fit, but the traveling they’ve done with theirs would have been much more difficult for a couple not experienced in doing so without one.

Their travels with Aarya haven’t even been so narrowly focused. They’ve also visited international destinations like the Dominican Republic, Iceland, Bahrain and Qatar along the way.

The next youngest child to have visited all 63 national parks is Journey Castillo of San Antonio, Texas, who did so by age 3 in October 2023 with her parents, Eric and Valerie.

Though the accomplishment was well documented, the family didn’t pursue a Guinness World Record. They were informed of a $5,000 fee, and that the organization wasn’t then recognizing accomplishments of very young children not solely responsible for achieving them, they said.

Both families said they were most interested in inspiring others.

While they’ll continue to travel as often as possible, Aarya’s family’s immediate goals aren’t as specific as they’ve been.

“I don’t want to break her connection with nature,” Sharma said. “We will probably visit all of them again when she grows up. It will be more fun for us and hopefully for her as well.”

epeterson@dailyherald.com