Key Things to Consider Ahead of Booking Your Visit / Trip
Our journey through a number of the USA’s incredible National Parks was something that we will never forget. It is also something that has made us committed to visiting even more of them in the future.
Having carried out extensive research prior to our trip, and having learned a lot along the way, here are a few essential tips that will help you make the most of your trip:
America the Beautiful Pass. I cannot recommend this enough – it is truly one of the best-value things I have ever purchased in my life. In fact, after only a few days I was starting to feel as if I had committed some sort of fraud against the American federal government for having got so much for such a reasonable price. At $80, the pass entitled us to unlimited free entry to all of the 423 National Parks in the USA. What’s more, this wasn’t per person, but for our vehicle. Therefore, it covered both myself and my wife (and theoretically two other adults in the vehicle if there were any) for the entirety of our trip and longer. The pass lasts for a full 12 months, which is astonishingly good value.
Date Planning. Trying to cover a lot of ground and to take in parks across a range of temperature zones / altitudes over a longer period of time takes some careful planning. In place like Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park, snow cover is such that many roads, entry points, trails and sections of the park are simply off-limits until quite late in the year. This also has a knock-on effect on accommodation options (particularly those within parks such as Yellowstone for instance).
On the flip side, the sheer volume of people entering some national parks (especially those closer to urban areas) during the summer period and dates like Memorial Day and 4th July weekend, can really impact upon your level of enjoyment and experience, not to mention your ability to find accommodation and the prices that you will pay for it.
Some parks such as Yosemite and Arches now operate dated / timed entry passes at certain times of the year. These do not involve much in the way of additional charges (I think it was just a booking fee of around $2), but are a way of managing the number of people entering the park of any given day. Without one you cannot enter (and we saw cars being turned away at the gates) so do make sure you check whether or not you need one for your visit.
How Many Days. This is one of, if not the most important thing. It may sound obvious, but the majority of these parks are enormous and there is so much to see. Within the same park, the differences between trails and between different sides of the park can be significant so you will really want to travel around within them (also see below re vehicle). The last thing you want to happen is to end up not having time for a trail or a viewpoint that you were desperate to experience. On the flip side, you don’t want to cram too much into a short space of time and end up so exhausted that you can’t enjoy it.
Similarly, in planning how long a particular hike will take, don’t make the mistake of just looking at the distance / terrain of a trail and assuming how long it will take. This is nothing to do with your level of fitness (or otherwise) and all about the time that you will definitely spend simply taking in the views and taking photos. I really can’t emphasise this enough – some of the views are spellbinding and you will undoubtedly spend a lot of time taking photos!
Accommodation Planning. Given that national park visits seem to be such a central part of the American national culture, it is not uncommon for people to book visits a whole year (or even further) in advance. For full disclosure, we booked our accommodation at short notice (less than a month in advance in every instance), and whilst choice may have been reduced in some places (and prices perhaps higher as a result), we were delighted with everywhere that we stayed and would change very little.
The one exception was that the National Park Service lodges in Zion and Bryce Canyon were fully booked, and we ended up staying about a 25-minute drive away from the entrance to the former.
It is also worth giving serious thought to the style of accommodation you want. For an archetypal national park visit, I’m convinced that ‘appropriate’ i.e. typical accommodation such as lodges and cabins add a huge amount to the enjoyment and atmosphere of the trip. Staying in a generic, business-style hotel simply wouldn’t have been the same. Whilst this may not be an important detail for you, it is still worth thinking about what is most important to you, whether it is location, style, amenities or price.
If you do opt to stay some distance from the park, you will likely save money. What you will sacrifice however is the time spent getting into and out of the park each day, meaning earlier starts and later finishes. Given that some parks receive a lot of visitors at certain times, this can also have knock on impacts on your ability to find parking spaces. This is particularly important in parks such as Zion where you need to rely on shuttle buses from the main car park at those times of year when private vehicles are not allowed into most parts of the park.
There is of course also the RV / camping option to be considered. This is something that can be done to suit a range of styles and budgets, and provides a lot of options within the parks themselves. Across all of these options, we relied heavily on this site to compare options and get the best prices.
Food. In the majority of parks, the ability to buy food / snacks once you have past the entrance gates is severely limited. Therefore, you really should come prepared, whether that be in the form of snack bars / trail snacks or something more substantial. What’s more, the national parks are full of picturesque picnic spots so you don’t just need to scoff it down in the car park.
For the food you do take into the park, please make sure to check the park’s regulations / advice as in certain parks (e.g. Yosemite) you should not leave food in cars due to the risk of attracting bears. Having a bear smash its way into your car is likely to put a dampener on your day and is unlikely to yield an enjoyable conversation with your car rental company!
We stayed in a number of cabins with self-catering facilities so also bought some food in the shops / towns surrounding the park. In truth we didn’t always find huge cost savings versus eating out as compared with England / Europe we found restaurants to be cheaper, but a lot of supermarket food (especially fresh produce) to be more expensive. The benefits though were in terms of quick, easy breakfasts to enable early starts, and being able to enjoy drinks with dinner either in our cosy cabin or out on the porch.
Equipment. Given the diverse range of landscapes that the National Park Service covers together with the varying weather conditions to be experienced at different times of year, this isn’t the place for an exhaustive list of all the gear you will need for any one particular trip. However, here are a few things that in our experience are either essential or well worth giving serious consideration to:
Traill shoes – worth their weight in gold for the additional security and grip they provide;
Hiking pole(s) – very commonly used and whilst I did not, my wife found it to be a huge help;
Food / snacks – see above section;
Water – as with food, but even more important. We left huge bottles of water in our car as we got through it very quickly on the trails;
All-weather clothing / changes of clothes – having waterproofs, another layer and a change of clothes in your bag / vehicle is either convenient or essential depending upon what you encounter;
First-aid kit – without sounding too negative, this really is an important to have. Whether it is simply some band aids, bandages and painkillers or something more comprehensive, it is far better to have it and not use it than be in need. Even if you have an incident-free trip, blisters and headaches may well occur and you won’t just be able to pop into a pharmacy to pick things up!
Vehicle. Getting the most out of visiting US National Parks really does require a vehicle. Given that we live in London, usually use public transport and seldom use a car, this was something that we thought a lot about before deciding to rent something.
In reality, relying on public transport / tours of the parks would in our view require far more time, money and effort. It would also ultimately not yield the flexibility and benefits that made the journey so enjoyable and carefree (specifically leaving all-weather gear and changes of clothes in the car on a regular basis).
Despite our carbon footprint reservations, we eventually opted for a 4-wheel drive vehicle as we had a fair amount of baggage, would be driving a lot in the mountains (potentially in adverse conditions) and were conscious that that cars in the US are on average (a lot) bigger than in Europe. We also wanted some space for passengers as we would be meeting up with friends in California.
The roads in the national parks are generally excellent however and so explicit 4-wheel drive / SUV capabilities weren’t really required in the end. The closest we came to this was driving around Monument Valley itself, but there were people doing that in ordinary saloon cars too. That said, when encountering so many SUVs, trucks and RVs coming in the opposite direction around the bends of narrow national park / country roads, we did feel a lot safer in a larger vehicle. There are obviously lots of different rental companies out there, and the pricing is often quite confusing. Therefore, it is certainly well worth making use of an online aggregator / booking tool, and we could recommend Discover Cars.
Throughout our trip, we did look somewhat enviously at the sumptuous looking RVs that are so common in American national parks. The added ability of being able to camp in the centre of many of the parks would have been terrific and if we do ever move to the US, then an RV would be amongst the first things I would want to buy!
P.S. Don’t forget about the State Parks! Whilst our trip obviously involved visiting a number of incredible national parks, our trip simply wouldn’t have been the same without some of the amazing state parks that we visited. Read about some of the best State Parks here.
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