National Park-Itinerary help!!!!
 

Hello all,
I am currently trying to plan a trip out West and visit as many national parks and other cool attractions as possible. I will be starting out in Indiana and going West during June for the duration of the summer. I would greatly appreciate any advice and suggestions. I plan on driving straight to Colorado and possibly checking out the following national parks: Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, and Rocky Mountain Nation Park. After Colorado, I will be going towards the Four Corners and seeing Bryce Canyon, then going into Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. I then want to go to California and starting at San Diego, move up the coast seeing as many cities, parks, rivers, lakes etc. as possible. I then want to continue up into Oregon and Washington and start to head back East toward Glacier National Park. I would like to see the Tetons but I don't know if it would be logical to go down to the Tetons and then back up to Glacier. This is a very rough itinerary and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

Don't miss Yosemite Park - just not on a holiday or a weekend. The snow is off the valley right now. The kids went up hiking to the waterfalls last week and it was beautiful. If you like to hike check out half-dome. A little scary at the top.

Yellowstone Park would be great if you haven't been there. Glacier Park had beautiful scenery but it didn't appeal to me as much as some of the other parks.

We drove Big Sur last Sunday and it was beautiful. There is a campground just north of Hearst Castle that had hundreds of female elephant seals lying on the beach. Think the males come in July. If you go Highway 1 be sure to check it out.

Grand Lake and Estes Park, Colorado, are neat towns if you are going to the Rocky Mountain National Park.

If you are camping a great place in Washington State is Ocean Shores. We have camped there many times and the campgrounds are wonderful. Lots of fun razor back clam digging.

Sorry - I said campground for the elephant seals and it should have been beach.

Drive the coast of CA, OR and WA then visit Glaicer. Drop south and visit Yellowstone and the Tetons and then continue on to the east... YS&T are not all that far south. Don't know the time you have allowed for all this road trip mileage but hope you have the vehicle and have planned for it. :-O

Rocky Mt NP is beautiful but check to make sure the road through it is open before you head up there. Do spend some time in Arches and Canyonlands before you go over to Bryce and Zion as they are fantastic. I also love Bandelier in New Mexico. If you can, stay in the parks and if you are not camping, call Xanterra to check for cancelled reservations as places open up all the time. Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are my everyone should see in their lifetime places. Do get a park pass at your first park, it lets you and everyone in your car into all of the parks for free for a year. Sounds like a fantastic trip, enjoy.

I forgot to add, go to www.nps.gov to get information on all of the parks.

I spent part of the 2006 summer in a similar but shorter trip. Going out of Denver I visited the Red Rock Amphitheater (not a National Park, but really interesting), then I went to Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion (a must), Grand Canyon North Rim and South Rim, to finish my National Park tour at Yosemite (after going to Las Vegas to attend two shows of Cirque du Soleil). I wish I had had more time to visit other parks.
Enjoy your trip.

Don't forget that there's a lot of great natural places in the West that are not in National Parks. For example, in my view, the best parts of Colorado are places like Telluride, Ouray, Silverton, Steamboat Springs, Aspen etc. They are surrounded by National Forests but are not part of National Parks.

Also, there are wonderful places in Idaho like Stanley and Lake Pend Oreille. California has Big Sur, Lake Tahoe, and the Mendocino Coast among many others.

One thing I would not look for though in July and August along the California Coast are elephant seals. They hang out there only in the winter and early spring.

Um, just how many years have you allocated to this trip? You're planning a lot of parks and a lot of miles. Do you want to SEE the parks or just check them off on a list?

I understand that there's no way I can really experience everything in two months, I am just asking for some of the best places to hit as I tour the country.

So to answer your question, I guess it would be more of a checklist than to truly SEE these parks because I know there's no way of doing so in such a short amount of time.

Thanks so much thus far, everything has been really helpful!

SEEING the parks will give you an idea of what you want to go back to and where you want to spend more time or not. I know some people want to immerse themselves in one area and do everything there is to do there but we have found that going back again gives us some idea of what to avoid and what to spend time on. Have a wonderful trip