Opinions for First National Park Visit
We live in FL and I am looking for some opinions on which National Park(s) to visit for our first Western trip. We want to go out West and will have about 3 weeks and we have 3 young children. Plan...
Forum Discussion
Starting from Florida, "The West" begins in Alabama and "The North" in Georgia.
Do you have any idea of how far you want to go, or what kinds of things you want to see? How young are the children? Under age four, they will remember almost nothing but enjoy almost everything if they are free to run around and do what immediately interests them, so your choices should be based on your own interests, rather than theirs. What they will remember most about the trip might just be that they took a trip with the family; I know this was the case for the three youngest of my siblings when we took our first trip "out west" from Michigan (we went to the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa and Nebraska).
Are you interest in history? Geology? Wildlife? Active outdoor recreation? Checking off a bucket list? People go to the national parks for all these reasons. I can recommend National Geographic's "Complete National Parks of the United States" which has descriptions of more than 400 properties in the National Park system, almost all of them north or west of Florida.
I hesitate to recommend any particular parks because your interests are likely different from mine, as I deliberately do not live in, or seldom visit, Florida, having once lived there and visited many times in my first 30 years of life.
Want to see desert landscapes? Almost all of the parks of southern Utah and northern Arizona feature desert morphology, and the Federal lands around the parks in the Moab area allow for active recreation: four wheeling, mountain biking, etc.
Historical interests? Most of the parks and monuments for the Civil War are spread out from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and east to Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.
Early Native American culture? The parks are mostly in northern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, southern Utah, and northern Arizona, spread among the extensive tribal lands.
Quiet places for outdoor activities without crowds? The grasslands properties are in western Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Mountain forests can be found in the little know parks and recreation areas in Colorado (like the Curecanti in the Gunnison river valley), and the National Forests in SW Arkansas and SE Oklahoma.
Or do you want to see the bucket list parks that draw millions of visitors every summer, tens of thousands every day in season, so many that you might need to join a lottery for some activities? The big ones are Yosemite in California, Yellowstone mostly in Wyoming, Grand Canyon in NW Arizona. These are far enough apart that you can't fit all three into a three week road trip from Florida, so you have to look at what is where and pick one of them.
People who visit Yellowstone can usually fit Glacier into their schedule, and find that Mount Rushmore or The Badlands are on their way there or on the way home.
Those who get to Yosemite are often within reach of Sequoia and find Death Valley on their way there or back, and might also visit Las Vegas, Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.
With a Grand Canyon destination, Monument Valley and Zion are not too far away (showing different aspects of the same High Desert geomorphology) and there are monument to a number of ancient Native American settlements along the way, as you cross New Mexico or southern Colorado.
My favorite places to visit are in southern Colorado, in the Arkansas and Gunnison river valleys, but that's because I'm a geologist. To most people, it is just more mountain and canyon country, and not the biggest, that would be the Grand Canyon further south and further west.
Do you have any idea of how far you want to go, or what kinds of things you want to see? How young are the children? Under age four, they will remember almost nothing but enjoy almost everything if they are free to run around and do what immediately interests them, so your choices should be based on your own interests, rather than theirs. What they will remember most about the trip might just be that they took a trip with the family; I know this was the case for the three youngest of my siblings when we took our first trip "out west" from Michigan (we went to the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa and Nebraska).
Are you interest in history? Geology? Wildlife? Active outdoor recreation? Checking off a bucket list? People go to the national parks for all these reasons. I can recommend National Geographic's "Complete National Parks of the United States" which has descriptions of more than 400 properties in the National Park system, almost all of them north or west of Florida.
I hesitate to recommend any particular parks because your interests are likely different from mine, as I deliberately do not live in, or seldom visit, Florida, having once lived there and visited many times in my first 30 years of life.
Want to see desert landscapes? Almost all of the parks of southern Utah and northern Arizona feature desert morphology, and the Federal lands around the parks in the Moab area allow for active recreation: four wheeling, mountain biking, etc.
Historical interests? Most of the parks and monuments for the Civil War are spread out from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and east to Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.
Early Native American culture? The parks are mostly in northern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, southern Utah, and northern Arizona, spread among the extensive tribal lands.
Quiet places for outdoor activities without crowds? The grasslands properties are in western Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Mountain forests can be found in the little know parks and recreation areas in Colorado (like the Curecanti in the Gunnison river valley), and the National Forests in SW Arkansas and SE Oklahoma.
Or do you want to see the bucket list parks that draw millions of visitors every summer, tens of thousands every day in season, so many that you might need to join a lottery for some activities? The big ones are Yosemite in California, Yellowstone mostly in Wyoming, Grand Canyon in NW Arizona. These are far enough apart that you can't fit all three into a three week road trip from Florida, so you have to look at what is where and pick one of them.
People who visit Yellowstone can usually fit Glacier into their schedule, and find that Mount Rushmore or The Badlands are on their way there or on the way home.
Those who get to Yosemite are often within reach of Sequoia and find Death Valley on their way there or back, and might also visit Las Vegas, Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.
With a Grand Canyon destination, Monument Valley and Zion are not too far away (showing different aspects of the same High Desert geomorphology) and there are monument to a number of ancient Native American settlements along the way, as you cross New Mexico or southern Colorado.
My favorite places to visit are in southern Colorado, in the Arkansas and Gunnison river valleys, but that's because I'm a geologist. To most people, it is just more mountain and canyon country, and not the biggest, that would be the Grand Canyon further south and further west.
