Stephen’s Top 5 US National Parks (That We Visited)

While on our 7 year, 50 state road trip, most of those years Shae and I had an America the Beautiful annual pass. That got us free entry into all the National Parks around the US, as well as other National Park Service-run locations such as National Monuments, National Historical Parks, National Historic Sites, and more.

The National Park Service (NPS) runs almost 500 of those sites overall, although only 63 (at the time of publishing this) are National Parks.

We tried to visit as many National Parks as we could on our road trip, although we didn’t make it a priority to visit every single one. There were two main reasons for that, with one of them being cost. Despite our National Parks pass getting us free entry to National Parks, getting to them all isn’t always free.

For example, Dry Tortugas National Park is about 70 miles off the coast of Key West. The only way to get there is by ferry or seaplane (or by boat if you have your own). A round trip ferry ticket for one adult is $220 if you have a National Parks pass, so Shae and I were looking at having to spend a total of almost $450 to visit there. With a road trip budget of $125 per day at the time, that would’ve been almost four days worth of our budget.

The other key reason we didn’t visit them all was logistics. Some National Parks – particularly those in Alaska – are very hard to get to, sometimes requiring flights to get there. Others were simply far out of the way of other places that we wanted to visit in a state, so we decided to prioritize other activities/attractions in a state.

Timing also affected our ability to visit some sites. For example, we were in California from late December to early February. We wanted to visit Yosemite National Park, but our trip around the state took us past the park entrance that was closed for the season due to snow.

The US National Parks We Visited

All that to say that we visited almost 40 of the 63 National Parks. Here’s the list of the parks that we did visit; these are in alphabetical order rather than in order of preference:

• Acadia (Maine)
• Arches (Utah)
• Badlands (South Dakota)
• Big Bend (Texas)
• Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Colorado)
• Bryce Canyon (Utah)
• Canyonlands (Utah)
• Capitol Reef (Utah)
• Carlsbad Caverns (New Mexico)
• Channel Islands (California; only Shae visited this one as she went there with a friend)
• Congaree (South Carolina)
• Cuyahoga Valley (Ohio)
• Denali (Alaska)
• Everglades (Florida)
• Gateway Arch (Missouri)
• Glacier (Montana)
• Grand Canyon (Arizona)
• Grand Teton (Wyoming)
• Great Basin (Nevada)
• Haleakalā (Hawaii)
• Hawaiʻi Volcanoes (Hawaii)
• Hot Springs (Arkansas)
• Joshua Tree (California)
• Mammoth Cave (Kentucky)
• Mesa Verde (Colorado)
• New River Gorge (West Virginia)
• Olympic (Washington)
• Petrified Forest (Arizona)
• Redwood (California)
• Rocky Mountain (Colorado)
• Saguaro (Arizona)
• Sequoia (California)
• Shenandoah (Virginia)
• Theodore Roosevelt (North Dakota)
• White Sands (New Mexico)
• Yellowstone (Wyoming)
• Zion (Utah)

Gisele recently commented on a different post asking a number of questions, one of which was which National Parks we visited. She also asked which were our top three. Trying to decide on my top three was too hard, so I’ve picked my top five, but I’m also going to have to include some honorable mentions at the end.

My Top 5 US National Parks (That We Visited)

1) Zion National Park

Trying to put these parks in any kind of order turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. Many of them have something (or some things) unique about them that makes it hard to compare them all.

Looking back at our seven year road trip though, I think my favorite National Park was Zion National Park in southern Utah. We visited all five of Utah’s National Parks over the course of a couple of weeks when my parents came to join us on the road trip, with Zion being the penultimate one.

The park was absolutely stunning with the drive in to – and through – the park being incredible. I particularly loved all the red rock that was reminiscent of Sedona in Arizona.

With rivers, mountains, waterfalls, wildlife and more, it was a wonderful day there. It blew me away, despite us not having a chance to explore the park as much as we would’ve liked. The park sadly isn’t very dog-friendly, so we’d left Truffles back at the Airbnb. That meant we didn’t have time to do any proper hikes there, so I’d love to return to hike The Narrows and/or Angels Landing.

2) White Sands National Park

White Sands National Park in New Mexico was actually a National Monument for much of its NPS-run history, only being established as a National Park towards the end of 2019.

With all the natural beauty that can be found in National Parks across the nation, if you’d told me ahead of time that one of my favorites would be a desert, I wouldn’t have believed you, but here we are!

White Sands is a fascinating place. Unlike the sand that you’ll find on beaches, the sand at White Sands National Park is made of gypsum which means that it stays cool, even in hot weather. Don’t let the cool sand fool you though; if you go on a hike in the dunes, you’ll want plenty of water, even if you’re not visiting in the height of summer.

One of the reasons I have such fond memories of White Sands is that it’s one of the most dog-friendly National Parks in the nation. Dogs are allowed pretty much everywhere, so Truffles got to join us and had a wonderful time digging in the sand, chasing after her ball, etc.

Another fantastic feature of this park in New Mexico is that you can rent sleds from the National Park to go sledding down the dunes (or you can bring your own if you have them).

Even Truffles got in on the action!

3) Theodore Roosevelt National Park

This is another entirely unexpected entry in this list. Before our road trip, I wouldn’t have imagined that anything in North Dakota would make my top five list of anything, but here we are!

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is an incredibly beautiful park. The scenery is stunning, with parts of it looking like Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Those aren’t the only types of rock formations in the park. There are cannonball concretions which were formed by porous sediment layers being bound together by minerals in water that ran through it.

There were a surprising number of scenic overlooks that were worth stopping at throughout the park.

Perhaps my favorite part of the park was all the wildlife. There were prairie dogs, wild turkeys, free-roaming horses, longhorn cattle…

…and so many bison.

My favorite part of that day was getting to see bison up close, with a long line of bison climbing up the hill behind it.

4) Rocky Mountain National Park

One of the most beautiful parks we visited overall was Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Shae and I visited there a couple of times during our stay in Denver in 2021.

At the time, you had to get timed tickets to enter the park. It looks like that’s still the case from late May through mid-October, so that’s something important to be aware of if you’re planning a trip to Colorado and want to visit the park.

During our first visit we drove along Trail Ridge Rd. Entering at the Fall River Entrance and exiting at the Grand Lake Entrance was a 41.3 mile drive, with numerous stops along the way.

One of the highlights of that visit was getting to see our first marmot in the wild.

Our second visit was even more enjoyable. During that first visit we’d brought Truffles along in the car, but it meant we couldn’t go with her anywhere that wasn’t paved. For our second visit, we got a timed ticket that included access to Bear Lake Rd and left Truffles at the hotel so that we could go hiking.

We then hiked up to Mills Lake.

While Shae relaxed by Mills Lake, I continued up to Jewel Lake which was even more beautiful and was nice and deserted.

5) Bryce Canyon National Park

There were several National Parks I could’ve put in fifth place of this list, but ultimately I settled on Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.

This was another park that we visited with my parents and the views began even before we reached the park as we drove there.

Seeing as we’d left Truffles behind a couple of days before that to visit Zion all day, we didn’t want to leave her behind all day for Bryce Canyon too, so we brought her along in the car. Most of the sights in Bryce Canyon can be seen at overlooks along the road running through the park, so that made it easier to have her with us. There were some overlooks that were a bit more of a walk, so depending on the overlook we’d leave Truffles in the car with the window down, or Shae and I would wait with her while my parents went to the overlook, then we’d switch places.

Bryce Canyon is a National Park that’s particularly notable for all its rock formations and hoodoos.

It’s a magical place that gets even more magical if you take advantage of the hiking opportunities there that take you down among the hoodoos. My mum stayed with Truffles while Shae, my dad, and I went on a short hike along the Navajo Loop Trail which gave us an even better appreciation of the formations.

Honorable Mentions

There were quite a few other National Parks that felt like they could’ve made it into the fourth or fifth spots, so here are a few honorable mentions that I felt also deserved to be highlighted.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon of the Gunnison can be found in Colorado, but is visited by far fewer people than Rocky Mountain National Park. That’s a shame because it’s a striking park, with sharp cliff faces leading down into the canyon.

Canyonlands National Park

Speaking of canyons, another National Park – and another Utah National Park – I loved was Canyonlands. In fact, I think I preferred it to Grand Canyon National Park.

Once again, the views were incredible and part of the reason I preferred it to the Grand Canyon is because Canyonlands had the added benefit of snow-covered mountains in the background.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

For the first half of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, I wasn’t as impressed by it as I was by Luray Caverns in Virginia. As we got deeper into the caverns though, the formations became much more impressive, so it’s definitely worth a visit in New Mexico (as are most places in that amazing state).

New River Gorge National Park

Shae and I actually visited New River Gorge in West Virginia the year before it became a National Park. In 2019 when we visited, it was known as the New River Gorge National River; the following year, it was upgraded to New River Gorge National Park & Preserve.

If you want to visit this site, I highly recommend visiting in the fall as the foliage is stunning.

I’d particularly recommend visiting in mid-October for Bridge Day. One day a year, the New River Gorge Bridge is closed to traffic and a festival is held there. It’s a lot of fun, with bridge walks underneath the bridge, bungee jumping, and even BASE jumpers being catapulted off the bridge!

Final Thoughts

It was really hard coming up with this list because I loved different National Parks for different reasons, so it doesn’t seem very fair to compare them all. With all of the parks listed in this post though – both my top five and the honorable mentions – you can’t go wrong with visiting any of them.

Shae has her own thoughts as to which National Parks were her favorites, so check out her list here.