To celebrate reaching the milestone of our first 100 blog posts, we are linking to our top 10 posts based on number of page views and personal favorites. Thank you to our readers for continuing to inspire us to visit new National Park Service (NPS) units and share the wonders with you all. We are heading to the U.S. Virgin Islands in less than two weeks and we will visit all 5 NPS sites there.
Our first hardcopy guidebook to the National Parks was released in November 2019!
We previously ranked our 10 favoritecampgrounds with running water, so these are the best of the “dry” campsites with vault toilets, four of which are free when you pay the park entrance fee.
10. Haleakala National Park
You might think Maui is going to be hot, but the free
campground in the Hosmer Grove sits at 7,000 feet in elevation.
9. Channel Islands National Park
You will never forget a night spent on East Anacapa Island
and not solely because the foghorn sounds 4 times per minute.
8. Joshua Tree National Park
This park in the Mojave Desert has several campgrounds with
running water and reservations, but rock climbers love Hidden Valley for its
first-come, first-served sites surrounded by boulders.
7. Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park
Kulanaokuaiki Campground only has 8 free walk-in campsites,
but at night you can see the glow of molten lava from Kīlauea Caldera.
6. Denali National Park and Preserve
Reservations (minimum 3 nights) at Teklanika River allow you
to drive your own vehicle (or RV) to Mile 29 on the park road and pick up the
shuttle bus there.
5. Canyonlands National Park
Willow Flat is in the Island in the Sky District west of Moab,
Utah way up at 6,000 feet in elevation; a great place to stay if you want to
photograph sunrise at Mesa Arch.
Slough Creek is a small campground in the northeast corner
of the park and its first-come, first-served sites are hard to come by.
3. Badlands National Park
Often jam-packed in the summer, the free Sage Creek
Primitive Campground is frequented by bison and coyotes (Note: beware the
sticky clay after a rainstorm).
Technically this riverside campground is in the adjacent Inyo National Forest, but staying here is one of the few ways you are allowed to drive your own vehicle into the monument.
These National Park Service units do not require you to camp in a designated site, so much the better for privacy and quiet. These are our 10 favorite spots to go backpacking and commune with nature in the backcountry. Remember to practice Leave No Trace principles.
There are 51 National Historical Parks in the National Park Service (NPS) System. Differentiated from National Historic Sites, each typically encompasses multiple locations to tell a unique story from the past. Below is a list of our 10 favorite National Historical Parks in the U.S.A.
National Monument is the most common designation in the National Park Service (NPS) System. Many of our favorites among the roughly 130+ National Monuments are wild places managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. The NPS typically has a more developed, tourist-friendly infrastructure with visitor centers, trails, and tours. Here is a ranking of our top 10 National Monuments of the approximately 88 run by the NPS.
Raven About The Parks 