Western National Parks Road Trip (Revised)

Old Jun 29th, 2016, 01:13 PM
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Western National Parks Road Trip (Revised)

Update:
So after discussing with my fiancé we decided to divide the trip into a northern loop and a southern loop. Since we will be going in August, we want to do the northern loop. We don't really want to fry in the desert too much. We cut down the number of sites and that shortened the driving periods. We also increased all the driving times and gave ourselves more flexibility with our days. Our original road trip description is also below. Let us know if we are getting closer. Thanks!

Revised Trip Itinerary:

Day 0: In the evening, drive to Charlotte, NC for early morning flight next day, stay and park at friend’s house
Day 1: Fly into Salt Lake City (early arrival), collect bags and rental car, buy needed supplies, drive to Grand Teton (5 hours)
Day 2: Grand Teton (all day)
Day 3: Grand Teton (all day)
Day 4: Grand Teton (4 hours), drive to Yellowstone (2 hours), Yellowstone (4 hours)
Day 5: Yellowstone (all day)
Day 6: Yellowstone (all day)
Day 7: Drive to Gates of the Mountain, MT (4 hours), boat tour (2 hours), drive to Glacier National Park (5 hours)
Day 8: Glacier National Park (all day)
Day 9: Glacier National Park (all day)
Day 10: Drive to Pend Oreille Lake, ID (6 hours), Pend Oreille Lake Walks (3 hours), drive to Moses Lake (4 hours)
Day 11: Drive to Mt. Rainier (3 hours), Mt. Rainier (10 hours)
Day 12: Mt. Rainier (all day)
Day 13: Drive to Columbia River Gorge (4 hours), Columbia River Gorge (6 hours), Drive to Mt. Hood (2 hours)
Day 14: Drive to Crater Lake (8 hours), Crater Lake (6 hours)
Day 15: Crater Lake (6 hours), drive to Redwood National Park (6 hours)
Day 16: Redwood National Park (all day)
Day 17: Redwood National Park (6 hours), drive to Oroville, CA (7 hours)
Day 18: Drive to Great Basin (10 hours)
Day 19: Great Basin (all day)
Day 20: Great Basin (6 hours), drive to Salt Lake City, UT (6 hours)
Day 21: Travel home


Original Message:
My fiancé and I are in the beginning stages of planning an ambitious road trip, for August 2017, that would hit the major National Parks in the West. We are giving ourselves 21 days to hit 12 NPs. In no way is this supposed to be a comprehensive visit to any of the parks. We simply want a taste of the major ones, so in the future we can decide which parks merit their own vacation in the future. I understand our itinerary is intense, but given our regular day lives (Army and Production Agriculture), we are up to the challenge. We both regularly work 17 hour days, so long and extraneous days will not be a problem.

Our main interest for this trip is to take in the scenery and natural beauty. We both love to hike(intermediate level) and observe wildlife. Also to take some amazing photographs. We would also be up for some more adventurous activities as well. We're actively trying to avoid cities during this trip; scenery is the goal for this trip.

One of our major concerns with this trip is doing it as cost effective as possible. We are currently living in North Carolina, so we decided flying into Denver and making a loop from their would be most cost effective. We have found some pretty affordable rental options that would fit our needs. To save money on accommodations, we're considering camping every other night, i.e. one night hotel, one night camping, one night hotel....and so on. This would cut our cost for hotels in half, but would still give us the opportunity shower and enjoy indoor amenities every other night. We also plan on using budget hotels to further lower our costs. For meals, we plan on staying fairly cheap. This trip is not supposed to luxurious, we're perfectly fine eating MREs half the time. We will buy few, if any souvenirs, our memories and pictures will be enough to take with us.

We have put together a tentative itinerary, to see if this was even possible. We developed a rough schedule we are pretty happy with. The breakdown is usually one day driving, one day park and so on. Driving long distances does not bother us at all (we have both drove 17 hours, in a day, by ourselves before). On the days we're driving, we want to try to see at least one iconic sight along the way. We would like input on our itinerary in general, sightseeing options along our route, time spent in the parks, any must sees we are missing, ideas for making the trip more inexpensive. Please remember this trip is in the beginning stages of development.

Thank you so much in advance!
Arogers is offline  
Old Jun 29th, 2016, 02:39 PM
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MUCH better -- quick learner

Still moving at a quick pace but 100% more doable. I would maybe count more time for many of your drives-- googlemap tends to be overly optimistic.
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Old Jun 29th, 2016, 03:03 PM
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There is one area that your drive times are way overestimated. From the gorge to Mt Hood, it is way less than 2 hours. That is even if you are coming from Portland. If you are coming from say Hood River (the usual spot people refer to for the gorge), it is less than an hour. Then, from Mt Hood to Crater Lake it is only about 4-5 hours.
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Old Jun 29th, 2016, 10:49 PM
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Day 13 INSURE you visit
https://www.nps.gov/lewi/index.htm

Day 14 INSURE, you take the lake cruise - otherwise, don't visit it. Easy walk down to the tour boats, kinda hard back up.

Day 18: Drive to Great Basin (10 hours)
Day 19: Great Basin (all day)
If this is the National Park, I'd remove it from your journey. Not that spectacular.

Consider staying the last night/day at Wendover, Nevada at one of their fine casinos. Then resume to SLC. IT will be very relaxing and memorable.
http://www.yellowpages.com/west-wendover-nv/casinos

Vaga
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Old Jun 30th, 2016, 03:08 AM
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Sounds like you've made a great plan!! Now, when you can travel in the spring or fall, plan that southern loop.
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Old Jun 30th, 2016, 03:41 AM
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I think this is a MUCH better plan! I am glad you decided to break your original plan into two trips. Campgrounds and hotels (especially) book up very early in the national parks. So as soon as you know your dates, you may want to start reserving your lodging. I would stay in the parks wherever possible to cut down on more driving. I know you mentioned you will be doing a mix of camping and staying in hotels - there are some fairly affordable lodging options in Yellowstone that are in a prime location. I have not been to Redwood National park but know that I have very little luck finding affordable lodging anywhere in California so maybe that would be a good place to camp? Just a suggestion!
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Old Jun 30th, 2016, 07:04 AM
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Some "top of the head" comments on this (improved) plan:

I would subtract one day from Grand Teton and apply it to Yellowstone. Unless you're hiking into the back country, Grand Teton offers a couple of stunning views and that's about it. Yellowstone, on the other hand, is so big and so prone to slow internal travel (road construction, traffic jams when animals appear, etc.) that you'll need the extra time.

I would drop Crater Lake. It's out of the way, it will involve a day's drive through likely hot conditions, and that time could be applied elsewhere, particularly between the Columbia Gorge and the redwoods. Yes, Crater Lake is beautiful (although I confess to me it's a "three hour" national park) but its location isn't very convenient given your overall plan.

You're completely ignoring the Oregon coast, and for that matter, the whole coast north of California.

"Redwood National Park" is mainly some lines on a map. It's interspersed with California state parks that offer equally spectacular, often more so, groves of redwoods.

So for all those reasons, and just for a thought experiment, let me propose a rather major re-working of your plans.

- Fly into Seattle or Portland instead of Salt Lake.

- Substitute Olympic National Park for Glacier.

- Include the most scenic part of the Oregon coast.

Your map (roughly) - https://goo.gl/maps/MDwxzwX8tyL2

As revised above - https://goo.gl/maps/An62Mh5e4h32

Here's my logic. First, you don't mind driving long distances in one shot, which is a good thing given your time constraints.

Second - and others may vehemently disagree - in terms of variety, Glacier NP doesn't add as much as Olympic NP. You'll see a lot of spectacular Rocky Mountain scenery in Grand Teton and Yellowstone, not to mention a couple of stratovolcanoes in Mts. Hood and Rainier, but Olympic NP has mountains and alpine meadows PLUS amazing rocky beaches and the incomparable rain forests in the Hoh and Quinault valleys on the west coast of the Olympic peninsula. Just my view, but it's way more bang for the buck in terms of hours spent.

Then I've added in the most scenic portion of the Oregon coast, the 70 miles or so just north of the California state line, followed by the redwoods.

I'm another one to discount Google's time estimates, but this route doesn't add a huge number of miles or hours, and it would definitely add a lot of variety and interest to the route.

Of course, just a suggestion.
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Old Jun 30th, 2016, 09:19 AM
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I agree with Gardyloo about cutting some of the Teton time to add to Yellowstone. You will not regret it because there are so many amazing and unique thermal features at Yellowstone and the park is HUGE (a figure-eight main loop of 144 miles.) Study up ahead of time and have at least a rough idea of what you want to see there in order to get the most out of your time. If you can score a room at Old Faithful *INN* (not one of the lodges) for at least one night, do it!!! It is an experience like none other. Allow yourself some time at the historic inn to soak up the atmosphere--sit in front of the massive fireplace with a glass of wine or some huckleberry ice cream and feel what others have experienced for more than 100 years of visiting the Old Faithful area.

Don't miss the other thermal areas in the park, including the other geyser basins and Mammoth Hot Springs. (That is another area of the park where we like to stay, and if you can't get reservations in the park, Gardiner, MT is a good option.)
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Old Jul 6th, 2016, 04:52 AM
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I suppose I am in the minority but I would not take the day from the Tetons to add it to Yellowstone - your plan for that part of the trip looks just fine to me. We prefer our time in the Tetons honestly, and ALWAYS wish we had more time there. Yellowstone is huge and there is so much to do, but the Tetons are stunning, less crowded, and we often find better wildlife viewing there.
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Old Jul 6th, 2016, 08:10 PM
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As some have suggested, you really only need 1-1.5 days in Grand Teton. You can knock off most of the sights within the 5 hours allotted on the 1st day and finish the rest on day 2 and still have plenty of time for activities (horseback, kayak, float trip, etc.).

You really do need at least 4 full days in Yellowstone just to see most of the sights. It is such a big park and traffic does not move fast there and will come to a stop if there's a bear sighting. Driving to Lamar Valley alone would take you considerable time and many sights require walking on long trails in order to see them properly (e.g., Norris Geyser).
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