Board Game Trekking The National Parks

Trekking Board Game: Review and How to play

This post contains affiliate links and as an amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read the full disclosure here

We got the board game Trekking The National Parks for Christmas, and pulled it out to play on New Years.

Trekking Board Game Review

I worry a little bit when there are massive games like this. I know a lot of people like epic board games like Catan or Ticket to Ride. But I always felt like I was at a disadvantage by playing with people who already knew how to play.

Luckily none of us knew how to play Trekking.

And I was happy to find out that, although the instructions seemed complicated, in reality it is a really simple and straightforward game.

We had 4 people playing (ages ranging from 9-35) and in the end, all of our scores were withing 6 points of each other. I really like that, because it means you stay neck and neck the whole time.

Games where one person pulls ahead so dramatically, that you can’t ever catch up, are the worst! (like monopoly, risk, or dare I say Catan sometimes).

Educational

As a homeschool/adventure loving parent, I saw immediately how this could be helpful for my kids.

  1. It helps in a unique way with U.S. Geography
  2. It gets the kids to be familiar with the big names of National Parks.
  3. The kids, after playing just once, are already asking when we will visit the closest one to us.
  4. The pictures are beautiful and awake the desire to see such outside wonders for themselves.

P.S If you are also looking for a History Game, Check out our review of TIMELINE

Landing On the Grand Canyon For Bonus Points

Set Up Trekking:

Like I said before, it sounds complicated, but everything is actually really easy to set up.

The only thing I didn’t like, is that they don’t have a place on the board for the cards (draw pile/discard pile). And the board is so big, that wherever you happen to put the extra cards, someone will have to help give the other players what they request.

That was me the first game, and since the game isn’t too complicated, it didn’t interfere with me being able to play or come up with a strategy.

Setting Up.

Here is a quick video to show how to set it up.

Here is a quick list

  1. open board game and put on table
  2. take out colored stones (red, yellow, blue, green, black) and put them randomly on each National Park Destination
  3. Give color-coded tents to each player
  4. put color person for each player on start
  5. randomly pick 3 national cards to start the game and lay them in a row
  6. shuffle, then pick the top 3 national park cards and put them in a row (you will refill these ones as they are taken)
  7. shuffle move cards and give 2 to each player, then line up 5 cards face up in a line. and have the rest of the cards in a draw pile, and a place for the discard pile.
  8. Bear goes to the first person to play.

Playing Trek

You have 2 (3) goals.

  1. Get colored Stones
  2. Get National Park Cards
  3. (have tent on BIG parks)

The game ends when one of two things happen. Either all of the colored stones are gone, OR someone gets 5 National Park Cards.

List of National Parks cards

The first time we played this, we forgot about the National Park Cards rule, and went with the colored stones, because of this it took a little longer to finish the game. . . but it was pretty fun this way.

List of Major parks cards in game

The Major Parks give you some bonuses, and some points at the end, but they are not essential to winning, so I won’t spend a lot of time on them. Just know that unlike the National Park Cards, these are always in play, and someone could undo your tent on it, and put theirs there, and thus taking the bonuses.

The main cards can be used in one of two ways.

  • The Numbers are moves you can use with the card. You can combine as many cards as you want to move places. you have to use the EXACT amount of numbers on the cards. (so if the place is 1 space away, but you have a 2 card, you can’t do it) If there is a stone on your final landing, you get the stone!
Numbers are for distance, shapes are for buying national parks
  • The shape/color helps you with gaining National Park Cards. If the Park says “1 boot, 2 fires” you have to have those 3 cards AND be on the national park space to get it.

Everyone gets two moves per turn. The game comes with this cheat card so you know what you can do. You can do two of the same move, or 1 then another.

We go around in a circle till the game ends, then you tally up the points, and the highest points wins!

Colored Stones to win trekking

Tip: Before you try collecting ALL of one color stone, you should know that you get bonus points by having the most of each Colored Stone at the end of the game. To get majority, you only need 3/5 blues, 4/7 Greens, 5/9 blacks, 6/11 blacks, 7/13 yellows. And that is just assuming that only one other person is getting the colored stones. so if 3 people have 1 blue stone each, and you get 2/5, you’ll still be majority holder. So if that is one of your goals, pay attention to what others have collected.

It’s easy enough, that we were all experts after about 3 rounds. I honestly enjoyed playing Trekking, and it will be part of our regular games. I hope you enjoyed this Trekking Board Game Review. Check it out here: