22 Less Crowded National Parks

Yeah well a number of their alternatives are lesser visited since they are darned hard to get to in the first place. Or they are specialist parks like the canoe/kayak parks. The Alaskan parks, except for a couple, are just about impossible for the usual RVer to visit. They have no access roads and are past the beyond in the first place.

They did show me one that I never heard of before: East Grand Canyon, if it actually exists as a defined park location.

The Guardian is a strange paper, it's a British Socialist publication, but much of their writing seems to be centered on the US. They have surprisingly good articles like this.

The articles are part of the paper’s environmental activism. They are specifically targeted at the internet where all researchers need to do is spend s couple hours gathering some facts from a government web site and slant them to fit their preconceived conclusions.

They are targeted at US audiences. They never appear in print in the paper. The goal is to put pressure on he US government to follow the Paris Accords and become more involved in fighting Global Warming.

Plus the articles bring in money to support the paper political goals. Posting links adds to the paper income. The more people who look at the link above, the more money the paper makes.

One reason I’m not rich is that it took me a long time to realize how easy it is to make money putting out a half-dozen similar articles a day and promoting them.

The real money is in the political field.

The article is interesting to me in the contrast and compare way it was prepared.

Re Dry Tortugas - the contrasting ‘popular’ national NP - Biscayne also requires that any RV visiting the park be a boat. There is one visitor center on land, but it doesn’t have and large parking spots for RVs

Interesting. Thank you for posting.

If you look on YouTube at the Long Long Honeymoon channel they just did a video on the Dry Tortugas Nat'l Park and Fort Jefferson. I think it was $175 each for the ferry but that included a buffet.

Your choices to get there are BYOB (Bring Your Own Boat), Ferry, Charter, your own Seaplane or a Private Seaplane.

agesilaus...I've never heard of the "East Rim". That section of the article seems to be based on the writer's conversation or visit with the owner of a tour business. I looked up their website. My guess is that they take you to an overlook on a dirt road off Hwy 89 between Cameron and Page, which is on Navajo land. He mentions the confluence of the Little Colorado River and the Colorado River, which may be where he takes his customers. I imagine it's a lovely sight, but I think it is him naming this overlook as the "East Rim". It is not in the National Park nor is it a "defined park".

And the photo of Antelope Canyon, with the caption "Antelope Canyon in the East Rim" is a little ridiculous. Antelope Canyon is in Page, AZ...nowhere near what could possibly be considered the East Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Bottom line...I think this bit of the article is mainly about the business, Sacred Edge Tours.

DallasSteve...Thanks for sharing the article. Some good sites to know about! I've been to a few of the "alternatives".

If one Googles East Grand Canyon National Park, there is no specific park by that name, and one of many articles that says it's not an OFFICIAL name, but one that some of the locals use to refer to the east entrance and the Desert View area.

There is also the east rim accessible from the North Rim area, with some roads that lead off in that direction, from AZ 67 and US 89.

Janss wrote:
agesilaus...I've never heard of the "East Rim". That section of the article seems to be based on the writer's conversation or visit with the owner of a tour business. I looked up their website. My guess is that they take you to an overlook on a dirt road off Hwy 89 between Cameron and Page, which is on Navajo land. He mentions the confluence of the Little Colorado River and the Colorado River, which may be where he takes his customers. I imagine it's a lovely sight, but I think it is him naming this overlook as the "East Rim". It is not in the National Park nor is it a "defined park".

And the photo of Antelope Canyon, with the caption "Antelope Canyon in the East Rim" is a little ridiculous. Antelope Canyon is in Page, AZ...nowhere near what could possibly be considered the East Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Bottom line...I think this bit of the article is mainly about the business, Sacred Edge Tours.

Looking at my map, the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers is in the GCNP. I think the writer is just stating that this area(East Rim), is geographically the eastern part of the Grand Canyon National Park the same way as the South and North rims are mentioned to give some geographical perpesctive on where they are.

BTW, the confluence is not easy to get to so the clients were probably driven to a look out a long way from the meeting of the rivers athough having only hiked there from the Tanner trail up river, I could not be sure of this.

Dave

Then the lookout is probably off 89 closer to Page, since the tour company is based in/near Page.

The South Rim and North Rim are official names on the GCNP website. No such thing for the east rim. So I'm agreeing that the east rim is just an area named by locals.

The article was written by a group of British researchers who've likely never visited any of the places mentioned in the article. It was all done from internet searches.

So the fact that most of the "22 .... National Parks" are not really national parks, or are not real places is not surprising.

The people who compiled the data and wrote the articles apparently believe that National Forests are part of the National Parks system.