Best national parks to visit in the US?
“What are your top 10 national parks in the United States?”
I’ve been to 24 national parks, mostly in the West and only a few in the East. I’ve been to many of these parks multiple times. Here are the ten that I would most like to visit again.
Glacier Park, Montana. By the time I went to Glacier, I had already been to over 20 other parks including Grand Canyon and Yosemite. The first time I was in Glacier, the weather was overcast and rainy and I couldn’t see much, but what I was able to see just blew me away.
Grand Canyon, Arizona. Absolutely stunning. If you have time, go to both the South and North rims. If you don’t have time for both, go to the South Rim.
Yosemite Park, California. I would recommend at least 2 or 3 days to visit Yosemite. Spend a day in the valley, then a day on Tioga Pass Road, then choose which one to go back to on day 3. If you have 4 or 5 days, that’s even better.
Rocky Mountain, Colorado. Absolutely stunning scenery and breathtaking views.
Yellowstone, Wyoming. The most bizarre place on the planet, with boiling water bubbling up from underground. Magnificent views and wildlife, particularly bison. I will never forget waiting in my car one day while a bull led two cows and two calves very slowly on the road in front of me.
Crater Lake, Oregon. Absolutely beautiful. Photographs and paintings do not do it justice. Grand Teton, Wyoming. This park is very close to Yellowstone, so if you visit Yellowstone you can easily take another day to see Grand Teton. Very magnificent views of the Grand Teton Mountains.
Sequoia & Kings Canyon, California. Wonderful mountain scenery and giant sequoia trees. Technically these are two separate parks, but they are adjacent to each other. Bryce Canyon, Utah. Hundreds of tall, multi-colored hoodoos. If you don’t know what a hoodoo is, Google it.
Arches, Utah. Over 2,000 natural sandstone arches. Now, here are two parks I would never go back to:
Everglades, Florida. Hot. Humid. Bugs. Mosquitoes. Alligators. More hot. More humid. More bugs. More mosquitoes. More alligators. Yuck.
Death Valley, California. HOT. Like walking around in a pizza oven. There’s a reason it’s called Death Valley.
I love traveling especially to the national parks for natural beauty and wildlife. I enjoy hiking to beautiful places and doing some kind of activity. So far I have been the ones below in the order that I liked.
- Zion National park
- Grand Canyon National park
- Yellowstone National park
- Great smoky mountains National park
- Shenandoah National park
- Mammoth cave National park
- Gateway Arch national park
- Best national parks to visit in the US?
The best experience for me was hiking narrows at Zion amidst huge canyons.
What is your favorite and why?
Best national parks to visit in the US?
I haven’t been to many and am missing some big ones, but for the ones I’ve been to, I think it’s Lassen. This is going to sound really stupid, but it’s the only place I’ve ever been where I looked around and thought, “Yep, I can see a unicorn living here.”
My list is (and all of these parks are A+ or As):
- Lassen – see above
- Grand Canyon – I rafted the Colorado for 8 days; I feel like I know this park more intimately than any other park
- Biscayne – the Maritime Heritage Trail is the most unique trail in the system
- North Cascades – I love a waterfall
- Everglades – eerie and beautiful. And my home state’s flagship park
- Rocky Mountain – a classic NP. Driving up to the tundra was a great experience
- Glacier Bay – stunning scenery
- Olympic – so varied and lush. I hurt my ankle here and got left behind in the woods
- Dry Tortugas – interesting history and fantastic snorkeling
- Hawaii Volcanoes – otherworldly in parts. Destruction is creation
- Joshua Tree – what’s stayed with me the most was going out at midnight to view the stars
- Mt Rainier – Very beautiful, but covered in snow when I visited, so I feel like I didn’t see it in all its glory
- Best national parks to visit in the US?
Can you recommend some of America’s best national parks? Are there any that you believe are underrated?
There are 429 National Park sites in the USA, although only 63 have the words “National Park” in their title. I have not been to one NP that I wouldn’t visit again. They are so beautiful, interesting, and in most parks, awe inspiring. So I’d recommend you visit the one closest to you. If you have the time and the budget, I’d recommend you visit my favorites: Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite.
The most underrated IMO are Crater Lake NP, Glacier NP, South Dakota’s Badllands NP, and Death Valley NP. Tips when visiting National Parks:
- For most of the Parks, try to go before schools let out in the Spring, or after they start up in the Fall. The reasons for this is most people with children travel when their kids are out of school, And Spring and Fall are usually less hot and have better weather.
- Do not feed or even closely approach the wildlife. Buffalo and bears can kill you, and even a chipmunk can bite you.
- Do not go to desert parks like Death Valley in the hottest part of Summer.
- Always carry water, some preservable food like energy bars, and emergency provisions and supplies in case your car breaks down. And do not think there are gas stations everywhere, because in some places, they are few and far between.
- Best national parks to visit in the US?
What is the most magnificent National Park in the United States? I know the answers will be subjective but let me know what you all think.
For me, the Grand Canyon will always be to parks what top-quality steak is to food. You need other food in your diet, for sure, but the steak is what you’re probably going to remember the most.
Full (embarrassing) disclosure: I’ve still never been to Yosemite or to Alaska. So this is worse than “subjective.”
But the Grand Canyon is one of those places you think you know from photos, but don’t actually know.
I remember coming up through east entrance the day the whole park was closed down due to Covid. (I was the very last person admitted before the rangers closed the gates for a few months. They gave visitors that day until dusk to leave. So I had the absolutely surreal experience of being one of maybe 100 people in the entire enormous park. Not an experience I expect I’ll ever have again.)
I remember walking up to the south rim… and was cackling with glee. No photo does the place justice. The Grand Canyon isn’t just a visual experience. It’s acoustic, olfactory, tactile and spiritual (which is to say: my experience is not necessarily yours.)
But if I had to pick a less-visited park, I’ll put a plug in here for the stunning Olympic National Park in Washington. I was just out there over New Year’s weekend.
One of the incredible things about Olympic is that you feel like you’re in 3 or 4 different parks, depending on what side of the mountains you’re on and whether or not you’re above the clouds or below them.
There’s a good chance the weather in Port Angeles, right on the strait, isn’t going to be the weather up at Hurricane Ridge, thousands of feet in the sky. Even though it’s just 20 miles away, you’re in another world from the coast.
There’s a rain shadow up there, which can make for a pretty stark contrast in the space of just a mile or two. Yesterday, Hurricane Ridge was covered in fluffy snow, but most the road up there looked like this. (I took these photos about 30 minutes apart, on January 1, 2023.)
A lot of people think Washington is all rain and gloom in the winter. (The cities, to me, are mostly gloom and crap, but nature here is gorgeous even on a rough day.)
But at worst, the weather is Irish and will change in an hour. On a good day (they’re common enough), you get to experience multiple seasons within a 24-hour time period.
Did I just say Ireland? Lake Crescent two days ago:
And you can come down from the mountain and go over to the mystical Hoh Rain Forest:
Climb above those clouds and you’re up in the sunshine, surrounded by snow, but so warm, you’re hiking in a t-shirt in January… while looking down at the weather:
To be fair, the Southwest has some of this, too. The Madrean Sky Islands in southern Arizona are amazing because, with elevation, you come up out of the Sonora Desert into Canadian-like forests while staring across the border into Mexico. Tucson can be having a toasty day among the saguaros while there’s snow in the mountains 30 miles away.
Washington isn’t alone there. Neither of these places are anywhere near as monotonous as some people think.
Olympic National Park is one of the most scenically diverse places you’ll ever see. If you can only visit one park in the Pacific Northwest, I’d vote for this one. If you only have enough time to visit one park in the United States…. that’s a tragedy. But I’d still vote for the Grand Canyon. Maybe in wintertime. Best national parks to visit in the US?
What is the most magnificent National Park in the United States? I know the answers will be subjective but let me know what you all think.
I haven’t been to all of them; notably, I haven’t been to Yosemite, which might knock my choice off the list, but even Yosemite is going to have a hard time topping the sweeping grandeur of the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. Here’s a picture I took looking into the Canyon from the South Rim, in early-morning light.
This is from Grand Canyon Village, and you are looking down at Plateau Point (the trail extending out to the rim of the Inner Gorge in the lower center). You can see the tilted rocks of the Grand Canyon Supergroup above Plateau Point on the north rim, the dark schist of the Inner Gorge to the right, and the lighter-colored rocks up to the Kaibab Limestone on the North Rim. You’re seeing over 1 billion years of geologic history, right here in this picture.
I have backpacked into the Canyon twice, and done a river rafting trip through it once, and seen it several more times from the Rim, and been enchanted with it every time. Best national parks to visit in the US?
What is the one national park in the USA that is a must-see?
This is kind of like the question “what is the best car?”
There are so many that are just mind blowing. A lot would depend on what your interests are.
There are four that should be on everyone’s bucket list. Yellowstone/Tetons. I put both of those together because they are adjacent. There are things in Yellowstone that, if they were by themselves, would merit a park of their own, but all conveniently together.
Grand Canyon. You can visit the south rim any time of year, avoiding the crowded Summer season.
Although not much of a secret any longer…Glacier. The Going To The Sun Road has to be one of the best drives anywhere. Stay at the Many Glacier Hotel…you might think you are in Switzerland…
One I’ve never been to, and probably never will, is Yosemite, and its nearby neighbor Sequoia. Missed my chance on a western trip 40 years ago, but I have no urge to go to California again.
Others that I have been to that are spectacular but don’t crack my top four: Arches/Canyonlands in Utah. Badlands in SD. Rocky Mountain in Colorado.
Not as spectacular but nice nonetheless: Great Smokies, Shenandoah, and the Everglades. Saguaro near Tucson.
A good multi-day trip, especially in Fall, is the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s actually the “longest” in the entire NPS system!
What is the best National Park in the USA?
I find determining the “best” of almost anything a useless endeavor. That said, the National Parks are selected to be National Parks because of how splendid they are – and how unique. So declaring any one as better than another is just a personal preference. What is it that you like?
If you like hiking, do you like hiking in the desert or in the mountains or along the coast? Do you like driving from one viewpoint to another so you seldom have to leave your car? Then you might not like my favorites – which generally require some effort to experience what is special.
But one of my favorites is Wyoming’s Grand Tetons National Park (a hundred miles or so south of Yellowstone). And there is a lot to see just from the car – or even on short walking trails.
But the best views come when you are on a trail someplace – around a lake or into the high country – away from the crowds, just you and nature.
But are the Tetons “better” than Glacier National Park or Canyonlands or Zion or the North Cascades or Grand Canyon or Yosemite? It depends on what you like.
But as special as these places are, I still prefer to go farther North – into British Columbia and Alberta (where there are four contiguous National Parks that cover 30,000 square miles!). Just driving from Revelstoke, over Rogers Pass and on to Lake Louise and Banff, then north to Jasper is spectacular and can take days. Hiking in that country is even better.
Conclusion
Best national parks to visit in the US? Yes, all of them have a very special story to tell, whether about the landscape or the history of the country. You’ll always have a chance to learn something or experience something memorable. One of the least commonly known is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The deep gorge is nearly as spectacular as the Grand Canyon and not as crowded.
The U.S. has an incredible variety of national parks, each offering unique landscapes and experiences. Here are some of the best to consider:
- Yosemite National Park, California: Known for its stunning granite cliffs, waterfalls, and giant sequoias, Yosemite is a must-visit for hikers and nature lovers.
- Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: Famous for its breathtaking views and vastness, the Grand Canyon offers hiking, rafting, and scenic overlooks.
- Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming: The first national park in the world, Yellowstone features geysers, hot springs, and diverse wildlife, including bison and bears.
- Zion National Park, Utah: Known for its dramatic canyons and towering cliffs, Zion offers fantastic hiking opportunities, including the iconic Angel’s Landing trail.
- Glacier National Park, Montana: With its stunning glaciers, alpine meadows, and diverse wildlife, Glacier is perfect for outdoor enthusiasts looking for scenic drives and hikes.
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee/North Carolina: This park is renowned for its biodiversity, scenic vistas, and rich history, with plenty of hiking trails and beautiful waterfalls.
- Acadia National Park, Maine: Acadia features rugged coastlines, forested mountains, and picturesque views of the Atlantic Ocean, making it a great spot for both hiking and relaxation.
- Olympic National Park, Washington: With diverse ecosystems, including rainforests, mountains, and coastline, Olympic offers unique landscapes and outdoor activities year-round.
- Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado: Known for its stunning mountain views and diverse wildlife, this park offers excellent hiking, camping, and scenic drives.
- Everglades National Park, Florida: This unique subtropical wilderness is home to diverse wildlife and offers opportunities for kayaking, hiking, and bird-watching.
Each park has its own charm and character, so your choice might depend on the type of adventure you’re looking for!
Best national parks to visit in the US?