Oakdale man spends retirement traveling to National Parks

Scott Bly waited 40 years to travel.

After growing up on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Bly worked and played football during his four years at Edinboro University (now PennWest Edinboro). After graduating, he went to Roanoke, Va., to serve as a police officer for three years and then transferred to Upper St. Clair, where he served for 32 years.

Bly, an Oakdale resident, has been making up for lost time since his retirement in 2021. He has set a goal to visit all 63 national parks.

“I had never gone anywhere on vacation,” Bly said. “My son played ice hockey growing up, so I’ve been to every ice rink on the East Coast. I’m very much a planner because I had a schedule all my life. For police work, we worked all three shifts, 24-seven, 365 (days a year).”

The goal began as something to do with his suddenly very open schedule. Bly said, with his wife still working as a school administrator, he didn’t want to spend his days sitting around. He took his first trip in September 2020 to spend the night in Cuyahoga National Park in Ohio. Three years later, he has hiked and camped in 45 national parks.

Bly describes himself as an “OCD” planner. During one of his first big trips, he traveled to the Dakotas and Minnesota, and his family used his meticulously planned itinerary to track him when he lost cellphone service about a day into the trip. His wife, Melissa, and son, Nate, initially asked to track his phone to keep him updated on his progress. Bly said he let them set up the tracking because he “had no idea how to do it,” then headed to a house his wife inherited in Ligonier.

Best laid plans

“(The house) is in the woods, but there’s Wi-Fi in the house,” Bly said. “I get in the car to leave and my phone isn’t picking up directions. I know how to get to Ohio from there, so I just start driving until the directions pick up.”

Bly tried to call his wife on his way into Wisconsin and found he still had no cellphone service. He quickly found he was in the middle of nowhere with no pay phones, and no service carrier stores to help him. He ended up reaching Badlands National Park in South Dakota without being able to get in touch with his family.

After a day of hiking and camping, he decided to turn his phone off and on to reset it. He was immediately met with missed calls and texts from everyone close to him.

“My wife decided to call the Pennsylvania State Police and report me as a missing person,” Bly said. “They put out an Amber Alert for me.”

He called his wife and once she realized he was safe, Bly could only describe her as furious. He later found she had been coming to terms with the fact her new husband might be dead. Some of his friends had taken Bly’s itinerary and began driving to try to find him in person.

Since then, Bly has remembered to turn his phone off and on after a couple of hours without service and said he learned to go more with the flow on his travels rather than try to plan every minute.

Learning to adapt

After being a police officer for more than 30 years, he said, he has struggled with relinquishing control over his trips. He has since realized he can’t control nature. Bly said he no longer turns his back on trying things because he is afraid to fail. He has used this mentality to push himself to go on more trips and explore more parts of the country.

“I’ve always said that if I’m going to die, I’d rather die on vacation,” Bly said. “At least I’m doing something fun. It was that mentality of ‘now this is my time to do what I want to do.’ ”

He doesn’t take every trip alone. Sometimes, after staying at a park for a while, Bly will drive to the next place and pick up his wife from the nearest airport so they can experience the next park together. He ended up picking her up after the missing-person debacle and received a hug and a “one-finger salute.”

“My wife is a school administrator, so she can’t go the whole time that I go,” Bly said. “I’ll pick her up at airports, and it’s the greatest thing. I take all her luggage. The first time, I picked her up in Bismarck, and we stayed for a week then drove home together.”

Bly said his wife has joined him in 22 parks over the years. They try to plan trips during the spring and fall so she can join as often as possible. They enjoy it so much that in 2025, Bly and his wife plan to celebrate their five-year anniversary by visiting two national parks in Hawaii and a third park in the South Pacific. In 2026, they’re planning to head to Alaska to visit the parks there.

He said once he bought supplies, each trip costs him about $2,000, with his biggest expense being gas. When he camps, he sleeps in the bed of his truck each night and pre-packs his meals.

“I’m cheap,” Bly said. “I cook dehydrated meals for dinner and eat oatmeal for breakfast.”

Camping community

He said he has been able to blend with the traveling community throughout his adventures. Fellow campers have helped him with car troubles, directions and safety advice. When he has offered to repay them for the favors, they only ask that he pay it forward. Bly has adopted that mindset and applied it when he has helped other campers.

He’s met some interesting characters on the road. While heading toward Mississippi from Utah, Bly saw three older people on the side of a road next to two broken-down cars. They were about 80 miles from the nearest town, and Bly decided to give them a ride. The three of them got in his truck with their bags, a safe and a machete.

“They’re all about 80 years old, five-foot-something,” Bly said. “I’m pretty confident that they’re not hacking me to death.”

After telling her the story, his wife hung up on him for the second time during a trip.

Seeing beyond scenery

While traveling, Bly has had a glimpse at the beauty of the different terrains throughout the 50 states. He has also seen the poverty and struggles that community members strive to overcome.

“I’m not one to be overly dramatic about the beauty I’ve seen,” Bly said. “On the flip side, I’ve seen how many people live in mobile homes. Some of the places I go through are poor. I just see garbage piled on the roads for miles, abandoned cars and junk piled on people’s lawns.”

Bly said he grew up poor with five siblings and one working parent, but his family was still able to live in a house. He said seeing how many people are unable to have a house put into perspective how lucky he was growing up.

“That’s the flip side of all the beauty,” Bly said. “Most of these national parks are in towns that are in the middle of nowhere that make their money off the tourists. It makes you wonder how people end up living in these little towns, and how they’re able to make a living.”

He said once he’s done with the list of parks, his next goal will be to visit all of the Canadian ice hockey cities.

“I can’t even ice skate, but I love hockey,” Bly said.