NATIONAL PARKS

I had never been to any national parks in America before this trip. I saw pictures of parks on TV shows, but I wanted to experience the place and see the National Parks with my own eyes.

While planning, we made a list of which parks we wanted to visit. Because of the limited time of our trip, unfortunately, we needed to pass up some parks. We couldn't plan how much time we would spend at each park, so it was hard to manage our time in that way. Since we didn't know how long we would spend at each park, we only planned to visit one park in a day, two at the most.

National Parks Annual Pass $ 80

Our first National Park was White Sands National Monument. How beautiful that place is!! That was the moment I became thrilled about visiting more National Parks. It's maintained well, has big wide open spaces and has been kept as wild as when it was discovered.

We paid a fee to get into the park, but after visiting two parks, we realized we should get an annual pass ($80) because most parks have fees around $10 ~ $20. If we visited just four parks, the annual pass would actually be cheaper than paying for each one individually. Also at each National Park gate, we just needed to show this pass to get in. What I really like about the pass is that you don't have to dig through your wallet at each gate.

We had already paid for two National Park's entrance fees before we got this annual pass. We told a ranger at the gate, of our next park, we had already paid for two parks. The ranger asked me if I had a receipt from those parks. I gave him the receipts and he subtracted those fees from the $80!! That was so nice.

At each gate of the National Parks, you get a map when you pay the fee. This map is really useful. Since our car was the Prius, we avoided the off-road tour routes.

At each National Park gate, you get a map of that park. The map helped us to make our plan and to navigate. Especially since our car was not a 4x4, we could avoid any off-road routes in the park. There is off-road information on the map. Also, the maps always have all the viewpoint information.

After we had the map, we made our plan for that day. We would scout out which campsite to spend the night first, then plan our sightseeing routes. Since we decided not to make reservations for any campgrounds, we needed to find a campground in the park first.

After we found the campsites on the map, we just went to the campground to ask a host if there were any available spots for that night. Most campgrounds have spots on a first-come/first-serve basis. This means getting to the park's campsite early was really important. Luckily, we almost always were able to get a campsite in the campground of our choice ;-)

National Parks are big. Yes...Bigger than I expected. From the entrance to the main view points can sometimes take hours. Some parks have tunnels with limited heights! I saw some big RVs that couldn’t pass through some tunnels because of their height. Some RVs are so wide, they looked as if they were going to fall off the cliff.... Just ask at the National Park gate attendant if your car will have a problem in the park.