Favorite National Parks

You can knock out 6 parks in Utah alone. I've been to Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce, and Zion. Zion national park is by far the most epic place I've been. Arches is also cool, but the desert is hot in the summer time. Moab has a cool brewery as well

Arches/Canyonlands are very close and give tons of good opportunities. We did a great loop one summer of those two, Dinosaur, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon (a one-day park, but pretty cool if you're driving through Eastern Idaho).

My favorites are:

Grand Teton

Yosemite

Kenai Fjords (small, but very cool with lots of great stuff nearby)

I have also been to Zion and Bryce and enjoyed them. But my favorite is definitely is Glacier NP in Montana. Going to the Sun road is awesome!

Glacier Natl is my favorite. I don't know what you are doing (backpacking, car camping, day trips into the parks etc) but if you go to Glacier an overnight at Ganite Park or Sperry Chalet can be cool.

Second recommendation for Moab/Arches. There is a Campground/Hotel on the end of town near the Colorado River that you can get a small rustic cabin for about $30 per night. If I remember they are religious/family oreinted but fi you don't flaunt booze nobody will say anything.

I've been to most of them and the one I keep going back to because it is a magic place is Big Bend National Park in Texas.

I would probably go for 3 or 4 days and get a small cabin. From there me and the misses would take little 1/2 trips, go for hikes, relax, maybe hop on the bike and hit a long ride up.

I just checked out some pictures of all these parks and they are all pretty spectacular.

I've been to Yellowstone and to the Grand Canyon. After that I have been to a lot of state parks out west and on the east. But havnt had the opportunity to hit up some of the big national parks.

Big Bend

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18559776@N08/sets/72157623005058761/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18559776@N08/sets/72157622403837113/

Next favorite: Arches/Canyonlands/Escalante

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18559776@N08/sets/72157621949644798/

My favorite is Yellowstone. I also love Moab. I've never been to Glacier but want to go.

For what you are wanting to do, if you want to be in the East, Smokey Mountains National Park is great. The town is a total tourist trap but the mountains are nice.

Are you mostly planning to see the parks out West?

I spent a couple months this summer driving around the country with a tent and hit up a lot of national parks. My favorites were Yellowstone, Olympic, and Navajo National Monument.

Yellowstone and Grand Teton were both great for wildlife watching. In Grand Teton, I watched a pair of baby moose playing for 15 minutes just across a stream in Cascade Canyon. We also saw a lot of wildlife in Custer State Park, South Dakota, just adjacent to Badlands National Park and Mt Rushmore.

Olympic is really cool because you can go for a hike in a truly massive rain forest, with Jurassic-like ferns and moss hanging from all the trees, and then camp that evening on the beach. Best tide pools I've seen. Buy some Rainier cherries from a roadside stand in July.

Go to Navajo National Monument to see the Keet Seel ruins. It's a 7 mile hike from the campground to the ruins, so obviously there's no crowds. You get out there, and knock on the door of this ranger hut, and he gives you a guided tour of what are supposedly the best preserved ruins in the Southwest. It's amazing...Keet Seel means "broken bits of pottery" in Navajo, and I'm walking around these ruins, and there really are 1000-year old pottery shards underfoot. The original turkey feather and yucca rope still holds the roofs of the buildings together in places. You need a permit to do the hike, and they limit the permits to 10 a day, so you need to plan ahead a bit for this one, although we had no trouble getting a permit.

Canyonlands had some incredibly cool hikes, especially the Needles district. Bryce Canyon had beautiful scenery. I'd also recommend Ceder Breaks National Monument. It's about half an hour from Bryce Canyon. Much less crowded, I got to see snow on the red rocks in June (it's at 10,000 ft), lots of volcanic features in the area, wildflowers, azure lakes, and hundreds of miles of trails (ATV and/or mountain bike) through the forests.

Zion and Arches were hot and crowded. Try to go in the off season. Grand Canyon was also hot and crowded, but when we left the rim and hiked down to the Colorado, it was just hot. Craters of the Moon was neat. We liked Redwood, but camping in California is really expensive. Petrified Forest was nice too, if you get off the main drag and go for a hike. I went for a run in one of the washes (basically a dry river) through the Painted Desert. It was hot during the day, but downright cold in the morning and evening.

Going alone? With kids? How adventurous are you?

My favs for:

Wildlife (outside of Alaska): Yellowstone (distant second would be Glacier)

Hiking: Yosemite, Zion, Great Smokies.

You really can't go wrong with most of them. The only ones I've been disappointed with are Joshua Tree and Petrified Forest. They were interesting, but can't compare to the more famous parks.

Waterton

Banff

Jasper

If you go to Moab, you can camp at sites on Kane Creek road for $5-10/night. I recommend the Hunter Canyon sites, where you are surrounded by 150 foot rock walls, and a small stream runs by right in front of your site. I went with some friends for spring break this year, it was in the 60's to low 70's, so perfect weather. We ran up Hunter canyon for about an hour and it just kept going.

smokey the bear wrote:

Olympic is really cool because you can go for a hike in a truly massive rain forest, with Jurassic-like ferns and moss hanging from all the trees, and then camp that evening on the beach. Best tide pools I've seen. Buy some Rainier cherries from a roadside stand in July.

Olympic is fun and you can go camping on the beach at Rialto or if you are up for a long hike, Shi Shi. But be prepared for a good amount of company if you do it on a summer weekend with good weather. Also you have to have special gear (Bear Cannisters)

Acadia is truly, truly glorious.

Escalante is not a National Park and stay out anyways, we want to keep it empty of you foreign tourists.

Rocky Mountain NP is my fav.

Agreed. My mistake, nothing there to see. Don't go.

Olympic & Acadia

I went camping at Zion, Arches, and the Grand Canyon this summer. Zion was by far my favorite park. For all of them I hiked during the early hours of the morning or late (8:30 or later) at night to avoid the crowds and heat.