Family National Parks Road Trip
This summer with all of the virus mess we have found the silver lining in the cloud in that our summer for once is completely wide open. We have a 13 year old and 11 year old girl plus two twin identical newborns. Ordinarily our older girls would have a summer jam packed with activities making it nearly impossible to do any trips longer than a week. The virus however has changed all of that and so we are looking at taking this rare oppurtunity to do a long road trip around the Western US to visit as many of the National Parks we can. So far my proposed route looks like this. Note that Google Maps only allows for route planning with 10 stops.
Editing this proposed Route from my original post... The number to the left is the cronilogical night(s) we would stay at said location. My initial post had Yosemite and Death Valley but I wasn't considering them as stops more than just passing through since we are close to Yosemite and Death Valley is not a place worth visiting in the summer.
1 - June Lake
2 - Las Vegas
3,4, - North Rim Grand Canyon
5 - Grand Staircase
6 - Salt Lake City
7, 8 - Grand Tetons
9, 10, 11, Yellow Stone
12 Deer Lodge
13, 14 Glacier NP
15 Spokane
16 Woodinville
17 Queets WA
18 Astoria
19 coos bay
20 eureka, CA
21 Point Arena, CA
22 Gilroy
At the very early stages of planning, I am stuck with two approaches:
1. Stick with this loop that hits as many of the parks as possible and allot just one to two days to see and do everything at the parks.
2. Drop a few parks in order to increase the number of days we can stay at the remaining parks.
I know many of these parks to fully experience you need several days to do them justice and really explore each one. We only have maybe three weeks to work with however and because of the babies, most of the activities will be limited to what can be driven too (long hikes are out but we can probably handle hikes up to about 3 miles in length). It is very unlikely we will ever get the chance again to do a long road trip with our girls in the future so we have one shot at this experience.
So my questions for the community are:
1. Given these constraints, if you have visited these parks before, do you have any suggestions on which approach to take? IE, hit as many as possible or just focus on a few?
2. Out of these locations are there any MUST SEE destinations that are easily accessible via stroller or short hike (less than 3 miles) that need to be on the bucket list?
3. Camping Reservations we expect to be a challenege. Are there any great campsites / campgrounds either in or close to these parks that you know about that tend to be less busy?
4. We will be pulling our cargo trailer so our older girls will have their own space. Wife and I are debating on what "toys" to bring along. Bikes are always a pain so we are considering electric scooters because they are compact and easy. We have some blow up paddle boards but they only make sense if we might end up at a campground next to water that is decently warm. Any other suggestions on activities to bring for a trip like this?
Editing this proposed Route from my original post... The number to the left is the cronilogical night(s) we would stay at said location. My initial post had Yosemite and Death Valley but I wasn't considering them as stops more than just passing through since we are close to Yosemite and Death Valley is not a place worth visiting in the summer.
1 - June Lake
2 - Las Vegas
3,4, - North Rim Grand Canyon
5 - Grand Staircase
6 - Salt Lake City
7, 8 - Grand Tetons
9, 10, 11, Yellow Stone
12 Deer Lodge
13, 14 Glacier NP
15 Spokane
16 Woodinville
17 Queets WA
18 Astoria
19 coos bay
20 eureka, CA
21 Point Arena, CA
22 Gilroy
At the very early stages of planning, I am stuck with two approaches:
1. Stick with this loop that hits as many of the parks as possible and allot just one to two days to see and do everything at the parks.
2. Drop a few parks in order to increase the number of days we can stay at the remaining parks.
I know many of these parks to fully experience you need several days to do them justice and really explore each one. We only have maybe three weeks to work with however and because of the babies, most of the activities will be limited to what can be driven too (long hikes are out but we can probably handle hikes up to about 3 miles in length). It is very unlikely we will ever get the chance again to do a long road trip with our girls in the future so we have one shot at this experience.
So my questions for the community are:
1. Given these constraints, if you have visited these parks before, do you have any suggestions on which approach to take? IE, hit as many as possible or just focus on a few?
2. Out of these locations are there any MUST SEE destinations that are easily accessible via stroller or short hike (less than 3 miles) that need to be on the bucket list?
3. Camping Reservations we expect to be a challenege. Are there any great campsites / campgrounds either in or close to these parks that you know about that tend to be less busy?
4. We will be pulling our cargo trailer so our older girls will have their own space. Wife and I are debating on what "toys" to bring along. Bikes are always a pain so we are considering electric scooters because they are compact and easy. We have some blow up paddle boards but they only make sense if we might end up at a campground next to water that is decently warm. Any other suggestions on activities to bring for a trip like this?
