After visiting 25 USA national parks and planning most of those national parks myself, I’ve figured out exactly how to plan a national park trip as efficiently as possible. This step-by-step guide will make national park trip planning quick, easy and stress-free.
Choose Your National Park
The first step in national park trip planning is to pick which national park you want to visit. You may or may not already have a national park in mind. Perhaps, you want to visit one of the USA’s most famous parks, such as Grand Canyon National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park or even Zion National Park. If you don’t have any particular national park in mind, check out all of my national park travel guides here for inspiration.
Decide Your Trip Dates
Next, you’ll need to decide your trip dates. Of course, your trip dates will largely depend on your availability. However, unlike tropical year-round vacations or other destinations, you need to consider seasonality when choosing your national park trip dates. Many mountain national parks have complete road and trail closures from early fall through late spring for snow, such as Glacier National Park’s famous Going-To-The-Sun Road. On the contrary, the desert national parks face extreme deadly heat in the summer months, such as the record-holding hottest place on Earth, Death Valley National Park.
Generally speaking, for hiking in mountain national parks (snow activities aside), visit in the summer. For desert national parks, visit in the winter. Shoulder seasons (late spring and early fall) are also typically great times to visit most national parks for good weather, cheaper rates and fewer crowds. Check the National Park Service website for closures specific your desired park.
How Many Days Do You Need At Each National Park?
I’m a firm believer than any amount of days in the national parks is better than none. On average, you need about four to five days to experience each national park fully. Some national parks are larger than others, warranting five to seven days to see all of the main areas of the park. For example, I definitely recommend at least five to seven days in Glacier National Park. Other national parks are much smaller and very doable in one day. For example, you can see much of Death Valley National Park in one day or even Canyonlands National Park in one day if you needed to. It really depends on the park, which is why choosing your national park is the first step to national park trip planning.
How Far In Advance Should I Plan A National Park Trip?
Plan your national park trip as early as possible, as national park hotels and campsites can sell out within minutes of reservation release. Many national park hotels open reservations as early as one year in advance of the trip dates. Some hotels and campsite reservations open closer to the trip dates (three or six months out), but this really depends on the specific park, as well as the specific hotel or campsite within the park.
Once you decide which park you want to visit, decide whether you want to stay at any of the hotels inside the park. These hotels are usually very expensive (read all my tips to travel the national parks on a budget here) and sell out fast. If you want to stay at one of these hotels, go to that hotel’s webpage to see when room reservations open. Mark your calendar. Be ready to book as soon as those reservations open.
Too late to stay inside the park by the time you’re ready this? No worries! There are plenty of other accommodation options that we’ll talk about next. If I’ve learned one thing the hard way about national park trip planning, it’s that hotel and campsite reservations inside the park boundaries can be extremely competitive, especially in the most popular parks. In fact, I have yet to actually stay inside any of the parks because I never plan my trips more than a few months out. Regardless, I’ve still managed to happily visit 25 national parks!
Book Your National Park Trip Hotel
After you have chosen your national park and trip dates, book your accommodations and flights. If you want to stay inside the park boundaries, I suggest booking your hotel before your flights because, like I said, those national park hotels sell out. If you don’t want to/are unable to book a hotel inside the park, there are usually plenty of options near the parks too: hotels, airbnbs, camper vans, paid campsites and free primitive campsites. I go more in depth about the pricing of each of these accommodation types in this blog post.
No matter where you stay outside the park, try to stay as close to the park boundary as possible. Most national parks take several hours to drive through from one entrance to the other. So, you definitely don’t want to add more drive time from your outside accommodations than necessary. Ideally, you’ll stay 10 minutes or less away from the park boundary.
Book Your National Park Trip Flights
Next, if you have to fly to the national park, book your flights. My favorite way to book flights is by using points and miles. For instance, with points and miles, our flights to Glacier National Park from our small hometown airport only cost $5.60 each. I have tons of tips for booking basically free flights with points here. Otherwise, check Google Flights to find the cheapest cash flights.
Book Your National Park Trip Ground Transportation
The last major booking you need to make for your USA national park trip is ground transportation. If you aren’t driving to the national park with your own car, you’ll need to rent a car for your national park trip. While there are tours you can take at many national parks, renting a car gives you flexibility to see the park at your own pace, stop at overlooks as you wish, enter the park before sunrise for early hikes, etc. I typically book my rental cars for free using travel credit card credits. Otherwise, I always check family member corporate rates, Costco Travel and Hotwire for cheap rental car rates.
Begin Planning Your National Park Trip Itinerary
Now that all of your main national park trip planning bookings are made, you can start planning your national park trip itinerary. I find that writing out physical trip itinerary in a Google Doc is the easiest, quickest, most organized way to map out any national park itinerary.
Start your national park trip itinerary by adding the national park and trip dates to the top of the document. Then, write out each date you’ll be traveling, leaving space for times and activities under each date. This is where you will plan out your national park trip hour by hour soon.
Plug In Your Arrival And Departure Day Info
Before you plan your national park activities hour by hour, though, first plug in your arrival and departure day information. Because you already have all of your flight and accommodation booking information available, this step should go fast.
Start with your flight time and confirmation number, and plan your day backwards: arrive at XYZ airport two hours earlier, drive to the airport XYZ minutes earlier, get ready and load up the car an hour before you leave for the airport, etc. Then, work forward. Add any airport lounges you want to visit before you go to your gate. Add any connecting flights you’re taking. Finally, add your destination arrival time, rental car pick up information and accommodation information. If you’re buying groceries for your national park trip (which I recommend), add the grocery store information too. Link my road trip grocery list to your itinerary to make your grocery stop even easier.
Follow basically the same steps for your departure day. I find that starting with your arrival and departure days helps you get into the national park trip planning flow. It gets you in the grove of planning before diving into the nitty gritty of activity planning.
Find Trip Stops And Activities On Pinterest
Next, find all of your non-negotiable national park trip stops, activities, hikes and tours you want to take on your trip. There are a lot of national park trip planning travel guides out there on the internet. But, my favorite way to find trip activities is on Pinterest. Pinterest is an absolute gold mine for travelers, filled with the best travel tips and destination guides from bloggers who have actually been to your destination before. Search keywords such as “best things to do in XYZ national park” and “best hikes in XYZ national park” into the Pinterest search bar. Then, save all of the Pins and travel guides you love to one trip Pinterest board. This makes consolidating national park information so much easier, weeding out guides you don’t care to read.
Shameless plug: I have hundreds of national park travel guides published on my Pinterest account here, as well as on my national park guide webpage here.
Save Desired Trip Stops In Google Maps
As you sift through these travel blogs from Pinterest (or Google if that’s easier for you), save all of your desired national park trip stops to a new Google Maps list. You can do this easily by heading to Google Maps on your desktop, clicking “Saved” on the left-hand column, clicking the “+ New list” button, and naming your list after the national park. Make sure you’re logged into your Google account so that your list and saved stops save automatically.
Then, type all of your desired stops from Pinterest into the Google Maps search bar. Click the destination and hit “Save.” Google Maps will then give you the option to save this spot to your national park list, which you’ll want to do. This way, after all of your desired stops are saved, you can easily visualize which stops are close to each other (and, therefore, make sense to do on the same itinerary day) versus which stops are farther away from each other. Keep hiking distances in mind, as you won’t have time to do much else after a day-long 12 mile hike.
Save your accommodations address to the list too so that you can gauge exactly how far you’re staying from each stop. Once you transfer all of your desired national park stops to your Google Maps list, you’ll have created your very own personalized trip map.
Organize Stops And Activities Into Your Itinerary
Now that you can visualize exactly where all of your national park trip spots are, plug the activities into your itinerary based on which activities you can fit into the same day. For instance, if you have a few short hikes (three miles or less) that start at the same or nearby trailheads, plan to do those hikes in one day. Or, if there are a variety of photo stops you want to make on the same scenic drive, plan to spend extra time taking that scenic drive.
Key National Park Trip Planning Tips
A couple of key national park trip planning tips that I learned the hard way so you don’t have to…
- Always take sunrise and sunset times into consideration when planning.
- Start your days as early as possible to secure parking spots at busy national park stops.
- If you’re camping, plan to be back at your campsite at least one whole hour before sunset.
- If staying outside the park, stay as close to the park entrance as possible.
- Check the weather forecast right before your trip and adjust your itinerary as needed.
- Consider adding a “rain date” to your itinerary to make up for bad weather conditions.
- Secure necessary backcountry permits if you’ll be doing any overnight hikes.
- Add hike stats like distance and elevation gain to your itinerary for quick reference.
- Link AllTrails trail maps to your itinerary to easily find while on your trip.
- Load/screenshot all maps while on WiFi before you enter the park. Data is limited here.
One more thing to keep in mind when writing out your itinerary is whether you want to do any paid tours or excursions on your national park trip. I find that most national parks can be fully experience without extra paid activities. But, some fun activity examples could include whitewater rafting excursions, guided hikes, driving tours, winter snowshoe or cross-country ski rentals, etc.
That’s it! Now you have an entire national park trip completely planned. Pretty simple, right?
More National Park Trip Planning Tips
10 Tips For Visiting National Parks On A Budget
Epic 7 Day Itinerary For Glacier National Park
27 Grand Canyon Tips For First-Timers
Grand Teton Yellowstone Itinerary For A Quick Trip
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