Episode 32: Tips for Visiting U.S. National Parks & Avoiding Crowds with Gary Arndt

Mary Herendeen:

As you enter any one of our scenic U.S. national parks, it's easy to feel overcome by the landscape. Whether it's the sprawling mountain vistas of Yellowstone, the sky-high peaks of Rocky Mountain, or the sunset-tinge sandstone reaching toward the blue skies of Arches. This is nature at its best.

If you are a regular listener, then you might recognize today's guest. Gary Arndt joined us just before the holidays last year to help you choose the best tech gadgets for your travels. Today, he's back to share his expertise on our majestic national parks. Since 2007, Gary has made world exploration his full-time job. He's traveled to over 200 countries and visited all 7 continents. These experiences have inspired a deep curiosity about the world. His podcast, Everything Everywhere is a reflection of his experiences out in the world.

Welcome back to the show, Gary. There are few people who have such comprehensive knowledge about our national park system. Can you tell us how this passion started for you?

Gary Arndt:

In the ‘90s, I had an internet company and I would travel on business and always do a Saturday layover to get a cheaper ticket. I would always use that opportunity to stay an extra day, and I'd always go visit park sites around wherever I was visiting. Whether it was in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, or LA. There's always something outside the city that you could go visit. Then in 2007, I sold my home and began traveling the world full-time. I would come back to the U.S. and usually go on these enormous road trips where I would put on 10,000-12,000 miles traveling through the United States and Canada visiting these parks.

Mary:

One of the things you mention on your website is that the park system comprises more than just national parks. Can you talk about that?

Gary:

In addition to the national parks, there are a whole bunch of other sites that the National Park Service operates that are part of the National Park System. These are historic sites, monuments, battlefields, and whatnot. There are currently about 426 sites, and I've been to 226 of them. So, I've been to over half of the sites, which can be anything as big as Devils Tower in Wyoming to something really tiny like the Thaddeus Kosciuszko Monument in Philadelphia, which is the smallest place in the park system.

Mary:

Can you tell us what makes this place so special?

Gary:

It's in Philadelphia and Thaddeus Kosciuszko was a Polish immigrant and an engineer who fought in the American Revolution and was responsible for building the chain across the Hudson River that protected West Point, so the British couldn't sail up the river.

It's this very small little place, but there are other ones like it. There are other larger ones you can go visit. There are many civil war battlefields that are scattered all throughout the South, and when you're there you can get a feel for the landscape of the battle, how everyone lined up, things like that.

The Dayton Aviation National Historic Park, which celebrates the Wright brothers and the history of aviation. There are lots of these sites all over the country that people just aren't aware of. You go there, and I'd say 9 times out of 10, you're going to probably have some sort of pleasant experience learning about something that you otherwise didn't know about before.

Mary:

What do you think is so captivating about the national park experience?

Gary:

Every national park is completely different and there really isn't a kind of universal experience you can give to all parks. Some are in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness like Wrangell-St. Elias, some like Hot Springs in Arkansas are in the middle of a city, some are conveniently located next to a large city, and some are well and truly in the middle of nowhere and take you hours to get there by driving.

Mary:

Road trips are becoming more and more popular these days. Can you describe the most scenic drives you've experienced in national parks? Tell us a little bit about where you went, what time of year it was, and what made it such a rich experience for you.

Gary:

Yosemite is great, especially if you're there in the spring. The experience you can have in Yosemite is going to be radically different because of the waterfalls. Yosemite has some of the highest waterfalls in North America and they're going to be going full blast in the spring because of all the snow melt. If you go there in October or September, they may be near dead because there just isn't as much water flowing anymore. So, that's always a great thing to see if you're going in the spring.

Also, drive all the way through Yosemite because once you get to the other side of Yosemite, it's a completely different world. If you're entering from the west—most people are probably going to be coming in from San Francisco—you're entering through the Central Valley, but when you leave, you're on the other side of the mountains and it's very desolate. There are very few people that live there. You can go to places like Bodie and Mono Lake, and it's just a completely different world that you're passing through as you go through the park.

Mary:

What about any off-the-beaten-path parks that offer scenic drives?

Gary:

Very few people make the drive to the north to go to Great Basin, and driving there is an incredible experience because you experience viscerally just how empty Nevada is. Outside of Las Vegas and maybe some stuff around Reno, there's nothing in the state and I mean nothing. I mean nothing, nothing, driving around the Australian Outback levels of nothing. So, to get up to Great Basin is really an experience. Then when you're there, they have some fantastic caves in the park, some of the world’s oldest trees, the bristlecone pine that are located in the park. Again, it's a unique environment that isn't really represented by any other sort of park.

Wind Cave is often overlooked in South Dakota because it's in the name, it's a cave. The cave really is exceptional and amazing, but on the surface, you'll see things like bison, prairie dogs, and a prairie environment that isn't really represented by very many parks. Parks tend to go for the sexy mountain locations and things like that, and yet, the Great Plains and the prairies are probably the biggest single part of the United States by area, and it's not really represented in a lot of park service sites.

Mary:

What are the biggest issues you see that are affecting our most popular national parks?

Gary:

The biggest one is probably over-tourism. The problem with over-tourism isn't that there are too many tourists, it's that there are too many tourists going to the same place at the same time, and it tends to be the popular parks in the summer when kids have time off from school. If you can simply avoid those peak times, you're fine for the most part. Like I said, if you visit Yosemite, say before Memorial Day, you'll probably have a much better experience than if you go after Memorial Day. There won't be as many families there, plus the water is going to be running, so the waterfalls will be full steam. I think the biggest thing is that if you visit at the very peak season, you're going to have a profoundly different experience than if you visit during a shoulder season, and arguably a much worse experience because there are so many people who are visiting some of these parks.

Mary:

What should people do to avoid this? Do you have alternative suggestions?

Gary:

The biggest thing you can do is not visit those popular parks. There are certain parks—the big 3 are Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon, those have captured people's attention. They're in the popular consciousness, but there are a lot of parks in the park system that are amazing places to visit that people just don't know about.

Mary:

Can you tell us about an experience you've had at a park that isn't as widely known?

Gary:

One that always sticks out to me is visiting Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska. I had the pleasure of being there during the last weekend that it was open, which is usually in early, mid-September. All the trees were changing colors, you have this massive glacier, you have the historical remnants of Kennecott Copper Mine, and we went hiking on the glacier. It was really an incredible experience, and it's a park that a lot of people aren't aware of even though they may take trips to Alaska. And it's one of the few parks in Alaska you can actually drive to, yet most people completely ignore it. It's both one of the least-visited and the largest national park in the U.S. Park System. It's bigger than Switzerland and it still doesn't get very many visitors.

Mary:

Wow. Yeah, Alaska has such spectacular beauty. Why do you think these places remain so off the radar?

Gary:

Most people that go to Alaska, you’re on a cruise, you go through Glacier Bay, and maybe you take a train up to Denali, and that's all they experience. But there are 8 parks in Alaska, two of which— Wrangell-St. Elias and Kenai Fjords—are accessible by car. In the case of Kenai Fjords, you have to take a boat trip once you get there. Then the other 4 parks are much more difficult to get to because you have to fly in on a bush plane, but they're really incredible experiences and you'll be able to see things that you will never see anywhere else in the park system.

Mary:

If you have access to a car in Alaska, what's the best destination for a national park road trip?

Gary:

An interesting thing that a lot of people don't know is Denali National Park is a single 92-mile road that goes into the park. For most of the year, the only way you can get on that road is on a bus. So, you get on a bus in the visitor center, you can drive all the way there and back. But 1 weekend a year toward the end of the season, they have a lottery where people can drive their own cars. And I know some friends that have won the lottery, it's not like the Powerball or anything, but if you submit for it early enough, and I would say if you were to submit your name for 5 years in a row, there's a good chance you’ll probably win 1 of those 5. Then you could rent a car in Anchorage or something and drive to Denali, and actually drive the road yourself, and stop where you want and take pictures of wildlife.

Mary:

For anyone out there who does have to abide by the school schedule, and their heart is set on one of these big 3 parks, what advice would you give them to have a more enjoyable experience? For example, we know that Yosemite has done away with its reservation system, and some people are waiting 2-3 hours to get into the park this summer.

Gary:

If you're waiting that much to go into Yosemite, in the amount of time you're going to sit in your car and wait, you could drive down to Kings Canyon in Sequoia National Park—just south of Yosemite—and have an amazing experience, see the giant Sequoia trees and things like that, and not have to sit in your car.

Mary:

Arches and other big national parks in southern Utah get some of the highest numbers of visitors. If you had to recommend a few alternatives that might offer a similar, but less-crowded experience, where would you suggest?

Gary:

The parks in Utah are known as the “Big 5.” They've all become pretty popular. I'd say Arches is probably the most popular. Bryce Canyon and Zion are popular because they're accessible from Las Vegas. One thing that people can do is to go east into western Colorado, into the area of the Colorado Plateau. You have areas like Colorado National Monument and Dinosaur National Monument. They don't have the title of national park, but they're certainly national park worthy and are very similar to the kind of things that you'll be seeing in that area.

Mary:

Any other lesser-known parks you'd recommend?

Gary:

I'm going to go with one from my own home state: the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. If you look at a map of Wisconsin, at the very uppermost tip, there's a small archipelago of islands and those are the Apostle Islands, and it really should be a national park. I'm hoping someday in the future it will be. But again, it's a place that a lot of people just don't bother to visit. In the summer, you can go kayaking amongst the islands in Lake Superior, a fantastic experience. But in the winter, and it doesn't happen every winter, there's a phenomenon where these ice caves develop and the conditions have to be just right, like Goldilocks conditions—not too cold, not too warm—the wind has to be right and the inside of some of the caves along the shore will become filled with icicles. You can find images of it; it hasn't happened for the last several years because I've been checking, but when the conditions are right and that occurs, these ice caves are simply absolutely incredible and one of the best things to see in the whole park system.

Mary:

Wow, that sounds pretty magical. How can people stay updated on the likelihood of this ever occurring?

Gary:

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore has a Facebook page. Go there, follow it, and then they post updates in the winter about the status of things. So, you may only have a small window to go and see it when it happens.

Mary:

What's another hidden gem in the northern part of the U.S.?

Gary:

If you wanted to, you could go to Isle Royale and pretty much just walk up because nobody could bother us to go there. It's the least visited park in the continental United States, but it's really one of the most special because so few people visit.

Mary:

I'm here in southern California. Any spots you'd recommend that aren't as tourist-heavy?

Gary:

Death Valley. Every so often they'll have rain and you get these amazing blooms. If you ever get the chance to go, there's the Devil's Racetrack, where these rocks moved and for decades nobody knew how the rocks moved. The rocks left paths and they didn't know if it was wind, and they did all these experiments to see how they moved.

Badwater Basin is obviously the lowest point in North America. I've known people that have gone there simply because it was incredibly hot. They went during the hottest time of the year. Make sure to bring a lot of water. That would be a great place to go.

If you really are intrepid and you want to go do something that's different, there is a national monument close to the border of southern California and Nevada called Castle Mountains National Monument. There’s no visitor center, there are no roads. I think there's 1 sign and that sign is on a dirt road, so you really have to go out of your way to find it. I think you have to drive through another national monument to get there, so hardly anyone even knows it exists because there's nothing surrounding it. Just to get there is quite an accomplishment and I think that's something really special.

Right outside from where you live, you have the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area that you're probably familiar with. There are a lot of historic sites there. Even the César E. Chávez National Monument is not that far away, and that's something you can visit.

Mary:

Let's talk about how to narrow down the best park for your needs. Are there certain parks that are a better fit for families with young children? What about solo travelers or those with limited mobility?

Gary:

There are parks that are closer to urban areas, closer to infrastructure, and then there are parks that are further away and more remote. I previously mentioned Isle Royale. Isle Royale is a national park that is located on an island in Lake Superior. To get there, you have to get on a boat and then once you're there, it's basically wilderness. Your only options are camping. It has the longest stay of any visitor to any national park because people just tend to camp there for an extended period of time. That might not be the best place to take little kids. Whereas Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which is in western North Dakota, is located right off the interstate, quite literally right off the interstate. There are plenty of services around it in the nearby city. So, you can drive into the park. There's a wonderful drive where you can see bison, wild horses, mule deer, all kinds of things. It's a very accessible park even though a lot of people don't visit because it happens to be in western North Dakota.

Mary:

We've talked a lot about parks in the West. Is there a park in the Eastern U.S. you'd recommend?

Gary:

Another great park that’s often overlooked is Dry Tortugas National Park. Dry Tortugas is at the very end of the Florida Keys. So, a lot of people may visit the Florida Keys on vacation, but to get to Dry Tortugas, you either have to take a boat or a float plane because it's an island. But once you're there, it's a lot of fun and I think it'd be a great place to take kids because it's all sand and you can camp on the beach if you want. To be honest, you could probably camp there without a tent unless you know it's going to be raining. There's Fort Jefferson there, which is a historic fort. If you just want to go swimming and snorkeling, it will probably be one of the best places to go in the Florida Keys.

Mary:

Yeah, I've actually heard of this. I'm not super familiar with all the national parks, but I've heard of this one. It's popped up on Instagram as a suggested place to go. I didn't realize how difficult it is to get to, but also how family-friendly it could be.

Gary:

Yeah, and the same is true with the Everglades. The Everglades is very close to Miami. If you happen to be there, you can go take a fan boat tour or something like that. Not a place you probably want to camp, and it's not really necessary to camp, but it's a very unique environment that's different than all the other national parks, and you could very easily go with kids.

Mary:

How about a few tips for solo travelers?

Gary:

The biggest thing with solo travelers is you have more flexibility in terms of where you can go and when you can go because you're not dependent upon school schedules, your spouse's work schedule, or things like that. Whatever is good for you is good for you, and that's how I've done most of my travels. Traveling solo just gives you more opportunities.

The one thing you might be able to do that would be cheaper than if you were traveling with other people is to visit some of the parks in Alaska that require you to fly in because you're normally paying per passenger, and that will quickly add up. There are some companies that offer a tour of the 2 parks north of the Arctic Circle: Gates of the Arctic and Kobuk Valley. You can actually go on a flight-seeing tour and visit both of those parks in a single day, which is really the only way you can visit them. There are no visitor centers, no facilities, no signs, no trails, no roads, there's nothing there. Complete and total wilderness. So, a flight like that is really the only way you can experience those parks and that's obviously a lot cheaper to do if you're by yourself.

Mary:

Is purchasing an America the Beautiful - The National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass really worth it? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what it has and who this might be the best park pass for?

Gary:

If you're planning on visiting any number of parks, like you're going on a road trip, it is absolutely worth it. Especially if you're visiting some of the more popular parks because buying the pass will easily pay for your entrance if you just visit, say 2 or 3. Especially if you have a car full of people, but it basically gives you unlimited entry into all the parks. I haven't checked the price this year, but it's well worth it. And I think if you're over 65, you can get a lifetime pass that is even more worth it. Once you reach that age, you're crazy if you don't do it because it's such a good deal.

The other thing I would recommend is getting the National Park Passport. The passport program has been around for decades. Every National Park Service site has a passport station where you can go and get your passport stamped, and it'll record the date of the visit and where it is. It's great for kids, but there are a lot of adults that do it, too. Sometimes if I forget it and don't have it with me, I'll just put it on a piece of paper or something. Sometimes they'll have additional stamps, and you have to find out where the stamp station is in a lot of places because they may have multiple visitor centers. That's always kind of fun and it's a way to document your travels.

Mary:

Wow, what a great idea for a keepsake for kids and adults alike.

Gary Arndt, thank you for joining us, and thank you to our listeners for being with us. If you're planning a trip, be sure to connect with a AAA Travel Advisor, check out AAA.com/travel, or visit your local branch. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. I'm Mary Herendeen, thank you for traveling with AAA.