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How to Plan a Visit to a National Park

Over the years visiting national parks, I have evolved a checklist of items to insure the most successful visit. Many parks have much to see and doing one’s homework in advance of the trip is the best way to insure that you maximize your time in that park.  Here’s a list of tips that can help you do that.

Visit the National Parks Service website, NPS.gov, for the parks that you plan to visit.

There you will find brochures, park maps, the park newspaper and trail maps all of which you can download as PDF files. The NPS site also contains information about ranger programs, park alerts regarding closings of trails, roads, certain areas and other information useful to someone planning a visit.

NPS.gov contains pages for all of the over 400 National Parks Service ‘units’ and is searchable. I have also called the park’s visitor center (the number is on the website) and asked if they could send me a brochure and they always have. Having the NPS brochure/map that you get at the entrance gate (or visitor center) can be useful in planning a visit. You can download it but the map type may be small and difficult to read.

The NPS.gov website for a particular park will always be the first link below the text on this site’s pages - just below ‘Other Resources’.  It will get you directly to the home page for the park that is the subject of that page.

Tip: Finding what you want on a park’s NPS.gov website is not always easy. However, the search box works very well. You can put in ‘lodging’ or ‘hiking’ and click on This Site to get a to a link to what you are looking for on that park’s web pages.

Always try to stay in the park.

The lodges are great, reasonably priced and it’s fun being in the midst of things. What they may lack in amenities they make up for in charm. Try to book a year in advance if you can. National park’s lodges book up quickly but generally have very liberal cancellation policies. If you can’t get a reservation in the park, book where you can and keep calling the park’s lodge and you may get a cancellation.

Go with a prioritized plan of action as to what you want to do and see.

Wasting time in the morning deciding what to do is just that – time wasted that you may regret when you have to leave without seeing things that you would have liked to see.


Do grab and go breakfasts or buffets. Take lunch with you.

This will give you more time to see the things that national parks are famous for. You can spend an hour-and-a-half being served breakfast in a short-staffed dining room. The parks have thousands of scenic spots where sitting and eating your lunch will be much more exhilarating than the décor in a restaurant or dining room.

Stop at the park’s visitor center.

The visitor center will have rangers who can discuss what to do and see in the park, hiking options and provide handouts detailing the hike that you want to take. The rangers can also tell you about ranger guided hikes and sign you up for them if there are size limits. There will also be exhibits related to the park and junior ranger programs for children. The bookstore will have plenty of relevant literature and, of course, there will be plenty of items for sale.

Try to give yourself as much time as you can in a park.

You will always want more. I usually try to plan for at least a 3 night stay. That gives me two full days for touring the park (plus whatever time I have on arrival and departure days). For many parks one or two days just scratches the surface.

Avoid staying at lodging that bills itself as a ‘resort’.

Especially if your stay is short, the amenities can be a distraction for children who would rather swim in the pool or go horseback riding than hike or see the sights in the national park.  You also will be paying for these amenities which you might not even use.

Consider one-way car rentals if you are visiting multiple parks.

When visiting multiple parks in multiple states check out the price of a one-way rental if that can work for you. You can cover more ground, see more in less time, and not waste time doubling back to return the car to the place where you rented it. If you rent from major companies one-way rentals between big cities may be well worth the additional cost. I’ve also seen it cost less for a one-way rental!

Try to travel in daylight if you can.

Since most of the travel will be outside of cities, often on unlighted secondary roads with one lane in each direction, night time travel is more difficult and dangerous. The scenery out west is beautiful and you miss it in the dark (perhaps not so much in the east).

Avoid interstate highways when traveling between parks.

Sometimes there is no choice but if I have a choice interstates rarely are scenic so, if a suitable alternative route (U.S. Highway or state road) exists and time is not a constraint, I take the alternative route. You will see more and may find it interesting to meet local people when having lunch in small town cafe’s. Locals have also given me information about nearby points of interest that I enjoyed seeing. The exception is travel through the mid-west farm country and most non-mountainous travel east of the Mississippi. The flat, farmland scenery isn’t something that most people find scenic so it is worth the expedited travel on the interstates.

Visit the state’s website for the state that the park is in.

They will send you an up-to-date state highway map and brochures. Brochures can also be downloaded but, if you prefer, they will also mail them to you free of charge. You sign up, check off your preferences for your visit, and you will get information specific to your preferences. You will also get their emails but you can just unsubscribe after your trip is over. You should also do this for every state that you will pass through.

Visit the Wikipedia page for the national park.

There you will find lots of information on the park’s history, size, number of visitors, geology and places of interest. For significant sights or places in a park there may be a separate Wikipedia page just for that sight or place. You can find a link to a park’s Wikipedia page under ‘Other Resources’ on this site’s web page for each park. *NOTE* Wikipedia is also where you can find a fairly robust month-to-month table of the weather for that park!

Search the web for additional information.

You can search online for any individual park or just about anything you want to see or do in a park. This is an especially good idea for hikes. Lengths and descriptions can vary and what sounds good in one description may not sound as good in another. This may affect whether you think that hike is appropriate for you and your family.

Get the AAA guide books and maps for the states you will be in.

If you are an AAA member you can go to an AAA office and get guide books and maps for the state(s) that you will be going to. The guide books are a good resource for driving information, lodging and dining options and will also contain some information about any national park in that state.

Check into the weather for the park(s) you are visiting.

On the web page for each park on this website there will be a link to the Wikipedia entry for that park. There you can find out all that you need to know about the month-to-month weather. It is also a good idea, as your trip approaches, to look at the current forecast for the time that you will be there. The park may be experiencing unseasonably hot or cold weather which may affect your packing for the trip.

Other Resources

National Park Service - NPS.gov

List of U.S. National Parks - Wikipedia

List of Visitors for each U.S. National Park (2017)

The Year When Each Park became a National Park

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Updated 02/11/23 7:04 PM