If you’re anything like us, you dream about whitewater in the Grand Canyon, hiking through the Olympic rainforest and exploring Yellowstone. We have a soft spot for U.S. National Parks- our first trips together were out to the Grand Canyon and Olympic National Park for some epic backcountry adventures and we regularly ran at Valley Forge National Park and the National Mall when we lived in the Northeast. National Parks have featured so prominently in our lives- we were even engaged in the forest surrounding Shenandoah National Park!
The National Park service estimates that over 280 million people visit their parks every year. Needless to say, most of those people visit between May and September, making it the busiest time of year. It is sufficient to say the most popular national parks are packed during the summer, in fact some parks have waiting lists to get campsites. Seriously – a waiting list to camp!
Fortunately the same travel tips that apply to world travel apply to National Park travel – go off season (like right now) and avoid the busiest sites. For example, instead of going to the popular South Rim of the Grand Canyon, go to the North Rim, enjoy the same view just with less people. This week is National Park Week (April 21-29th), meaning every park, all 397 of them, are FREE this week. I hope we have the opportunity to check some of these parks out this weekend. This may just be the time to visit Dry Tortugas!
Lonely Planet authors put together their top parks for April. I can’t say I’ve been to most of these, how about you?
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