Glacier NP, Montana and Mount Rainier NP, Cascades NP, and Mount Olympic NP, in WA
 

If I have 1 week in Montana and 2 weeks in Washington, what are the most scenic areas of Glacier National Park in Montana and Mount Rainier, Cascades, and Mount Olympic National Parks in Seattle, to visit, either driving or short easy hikes not more than 15-20 min walk, which areas within the parks would you go to?

Also recommendations for hotels in those areas?

thanks

When would this trip take place?

Some guidelines for future reference:

1. It's Olympic National Park, and it's very big. The park has a wilderness/roadless core; the main destinations are very spread out around the periphery of the park, often hours apart, via uninspiring roads that are outside the park boundaries. Map - https://goo.gl/maps/WMApWWa8y7KMRKtq8 . One generally needs at least three days to see the main sights, complicated by accommodation being in very short supply on the west coast and the park's coastal strip.

2. North Cascades National Park is also a wilderness/hike-in park with no visitor facilities, apart from some campgrounds, within the park boundary. Accommodations are clustered in the western and eastern approaches to the park along WA Hwy 20, in particular the Methow Valley on the east side of the park and the Cascade Crest. At present SR 20 is closed to through traffic due to wildfires and smoky conditions. The road is also closed during the winter due to deep snow.

3. Because of its proximity to Seattle/Tacoma, Mount Rainier NP is VERY popular with day trippers, leading to a shortage of accommodations and even traffic jams at park entrances and at the two main visitor centers on the mountain, at Paradise and Sunrise. As with the North Cascades, the main visitor season on Mount Rainier is fairly short, with snow covering the trails (and the roads here and there) from October until June, even July in places. In some years, Paradise has been the snowiest place on earth. As with the North Cascades, wildfires and smoke have been increasingly impacting the visitor experience. Also this year, a major road bisecting the park, the (incomparable) Stevens Canyon Road, is closed to through traffic from Mondays to Fridays for construction.

4. The same goes for Glacier NP, with its (rightly) famous Going to the Sun Road open from June to October, or sometimes not until July. As with Mount Rainier, accommodation needs to be booked well in advance.

So the "when" question is extremely important.

In Olympic NP you can drive up to Hurricane Ridge for a more Alpine experience, and on the western side drive and then walk in the rain forest.

thanks, so on the map you linked, which are the most important sites to see of all those stops? Do any of these stops have short easy hikes maybe 15-20 minutes? up to 30?
Because of fires and smoke, does that mean some sites can't be reached or that it's not worth visiting the park this year?

thank you. so you can't drive through most of the park?

When are you going?

hoping to go early September

a lot of the hikes in these parks are longer than 20 minutes, so is it worth going if we will only do the lookouts on drives and short easy hikes and do we need so many days?

No, like I said, the park has a roadless wilderness core that one can only reach on foot. One must travel around the circumference of the park and take "spur" roads (into the rainforest valleys, for example) to see the various visitor highlights. Olympic NP is not like Yellowstone or other parks with interior road networks.

If you plan to visit in September you need to make accommodation reservations as a top priority. Also note that North Cascades NP is currently virtually inaccessible due to road closures resulting from wildfires in the region.

I got back from 6 days in Glacier National Park on the 12th; it is a beautiful, beautiful place but getting in is a hassle. If you enter between 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., you must have either a reservation to be on the Going to the Sun Road or a lodging reservation. However, a local told me that September was his favorite month to visit the park so probably restrictions and crowd numbers change after Labor Day. (I think many of the boat rides even close by mid-September.) Study the park website carefully.

I stayed at Motel Lake McDonald (one of the cheapest and plainest lodgings inside the park but perfectly adequate). We had a few hours on a couple of days when it was smoky & hazy but generally the wind kept the smoke out during my week there. However departure day (the 12th) had the most haze of the whole trip. There's just no way to predict, unfortunately.

Good luck!

I will be posting a trip report soon.

There are wild fires in glacier national park in addition to Cascades? So is it worth going to Glacier in September?

The whole region is currently in the grip of horrid air quality in addition to being in danger from the actual fires. Today Seattle's air quality index indicates that we have the unhealthiest air quality in the world, ahead of Doha, Qatar. The sky outside my windows is pale orange.

You might want to consult a wildfire/smoke map like this one - Wildfire smoke map: Track fires and red flag warnings across the US | usatoday.com

I won't tell you not to come, but if it were me, I'd probably be looking at other destinations for September travel.

thanks, I think I'll have to postpone the Washington trip.