At 93, Joy Ryan has seen all 63 national parks

"Do you want to go see your first mountain?" he asked. Her answer was "What time are you picking me up?" Her husband had passed away, she says, and with no children close by and no dog, nobody depended on her. "This is time to either do it or forget it."

That call had been a long time coming. Brad says family strife kept them apart for years, and it was after Joy had a health scare and he struggled with his mental health in vet school that he reached out. She had once said, almost in passing, that she wished she had seen more of what he had seen in life. He decided to do it with her while she was here.

First stop was Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Brad was still in his scrubs. They got in the car around five and drove through the night, reaching their campsite at about two in the morning after two hours of rain.

It was Joy's first time camping, and Brad says she was a trooper. She didn't complain, and she held the umbrella over him while he put up the tent. There was an air mattress, briefly, until Joy settled the matter herself. "I'm sleeping on the ground."

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Even on that first trip, they say, they knew they were an odd couple, and they laugh about it. Over eight years the parks added up. A standout was California's redwoods, where Joy is asked if looking up makes her feel young. "Not me."

Some trips were rough going, desert ground included, and getting through one earned a cheer of "You did it." Their travel rule is plain. "It's never going to be perfect. You want a perfect trip, you better just stay home."

As Joy got close to 90 they roughed it less, but they kept moving, all the way to the last park in American Samoa. That makes Joy the oldest living person to visit every US national park.

The list was never really the point. It was a reason to spend time together, so now they want a reason to see the world, starting with East Africa and maybe all seven continents. "When you get out in the big wide world, it really opens up your eyes," Joy says. They're calling it the era of international Joy.