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Beginning Tips, Coach-Net, National Park, National Park Advice, RV, RV Life, RV Tips, Tips for RVing In National Parks
What’s the most appealing thing about RVing? For many people, it’s the opportunity to visit some of America’s most precious treasures – our National Parks – in style and comfort. And for many of us, planning the trip is half the fun of the RV lifestyle.
Here are 10 tips you may want to use to make that RV trip of a lifetime even more enjoyable:
- Information, data, reservation services and trip-planning tours at National Parks and other federal lands are available on recreation.gov, an interagency partnership website for federal agencies. When planning a trip, it’s important to go here first to identify the particular schedules and information about your future destination.
- It’s difficult to get RV sites at the more popular National Parks, and reservations are necessary. Campgrounds throughout the Park Service can set their own reservation schedules and rules, but many are subject to a ”rolling booking window”, which allows you to book a reservation for a specified amount of time – typically, within six or twelve months in advance of your arrival date. During summer months, RV reservations at Parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite or Grand Canyon typically fill up the first day of the window, often within minutes of its opening (10 am, Eastern time, 7 am Pacific). Early birds do well here.
- The recreation.gov website is not actually owned and operated by the federal government – it’s run by private companies who enter into exclusive contracts with the feds. In the fall of 2018, a new 10-year contract was awarded to Booz Allen Hamilton, a giant software company which agreed to modernize the site, including providing real-time updates – in other words, if a campsite is canceled, it will reappear as available on the website. Unfortunately, the company had to basically rebuild recreation.gov from scratch and naturally, there are still some glitches. Recently, Booz Allen agreed to release data on federal land camping to other private reservation services, and companies like Hipcamp.com now offer reservations at a limited number of popular National Parks like Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and more.
- Back to the camping experience…larger National Parks generally offer RV sites with hookups, although many have just electric and water. If you’re a boondocker or not afraid to try dry camping for a few days, you’ll find that you have many more options to dry camp within the Parks. Just be sure to check for vehicle size limits – many of these campgrounds cannot accommodate larger rigs.
- Likewise, if your schedule is flexible, look at optional dates. It’s easy to do on the website, and avoiding holidays can sometimes open up many more opportunities.
- If you’re going to be traveling into more than one National Park or visiting one Park multiple times, it will probably pay to buy a multi-day or annual America the Beautiful entrance pass. If you’re a senior, the lifetime pass is $80, or $20 annually. If you haven’t reached those golden years, it’s $80 year. Active military is free. The America the Beautiful pass is an annual pass which covers entrance fees at national parks and national wildlife refuges as well as standard amenity fees (day use fees) at national forests and grasslands, and at lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A pass covers entrance, standard amenity fees and day-use fees for a driver and all passengers in a personal vehicle at per vehicle fee areas (or up to four adults at sites that charge per person). Children age 15 or under are admitted free.
- It’s not just the campsites which have limited space. The infamous tunnel at Zion National Park, which opened in 1930, cannot accommodate today’s large vehicles and the Park’s rangers control one-way traffic flow – you will wait at each end for the ranger to allow you to enter, and then drive down the center of the tunnel. We planned accordingly and only took our tow vehicle through the tunnel, although we did see some small motorhomes and trailers on the road. Vehicles 13 feet or higher cannot pass through the tunnel, and length restrictions throughout Zion are 40 feet for a single vehicle and 50 feet for any vehicle combination. Just outside of South Dakota’s Badlands National Park on the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway there are six tunnels, many tight hairpin curves and spiraling “pigtail” bridges. Fortunately, we left the fifth wheel in our campground on this trip and found the tunnels were so tight we had to pull in the rearview mirrors on our truck in order to navigate through. Definitely not the road for large rigs!
- If you can’t get reservations for that perfect pristine campsite in the midst of a beautiful National Park, don’t despair. We’ve found that most Parks are surrounded by private campgrounds, and many of them are wonderful. We don’t usually plan six months ahead, and when we visited Yellowstone, we had no hope of finding a campsite within the Park. Instead, we camped for several days just outside the North entrance, then moved to the West entrance and stayed in West Yellowstone. We went into the Park every day and were able to return home to swim in the campground pool taking advantage of the amenities each evening.
- Likewise, on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon, we were able to get a last-minute campsite at the South Rim’s Trailer Village. (It was also in March.) We spent a couple of enjoyable nights there during the week, and then moved to a park a few miles outside the main gate and continued to enjoy the Grand Canyon experience.
- After all the planning, it’s time to have fun! There’s no better place to experience the diverse and brilliant beauty of our land than at one of our National Parks. Opportunities are bountiful — whether it’s hiking in a forest, walking along a beach, fishing in a crystal-clear river or just relaxing in the great outdoors, these natural treasures bring us amazing experiences along with true peace and happiness.
Finally, the real beauty of visiting our National Parks in our RVs is that we have the flexibility to take advantage of options as we plan our trips. A little advance planning makes it all so much easier, but if we want to make a left hand turn instead of going right, we can do so. After all, our homes are on wheels.
About the Author: Sue Bray
Sue Bray is a graduate of Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and began her career working for Members of Congress in both their home state offices and in Washington, D.C. In 2009, Sue was inducted into the RV/MH Hall of Fame – one of five representatives of the RV community selected each year, and only the ninth woman to be selected.
In 2010, Sue launched her own consulting firm, specializing in product development, events production and marketing. She and her husband Mel Magson are also enjoying the RV lifestyle, having logged more than 30,000 miles towing their 5th wheel trailer.
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A little secret: Among the best ways to escape holiday stress is a national park trip. Though often thought of as a summer destination, only a couple of the parks close in winter, and almost all offer warm, cozy and peaceful holiday experiences. A bonus is that almost all parks are less crowded during winter.Here are six great holiday-themed must-do’s at our national parks:
Most travelers think of summer as the best time to hit national parks – but winter also offers several spectacular sights that make for memorable visits.
This travel season we’ve spent time in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Shenandoah National Park, and Acadia National Park. We’ve also dipped our toes into the Catskills and the White Mountains, along with national and provincial parks in the Canadian Maritimes. Visits to places outside of our National Park system clearly revealed just how special our national parks are.
We didn’t plan it this way, to be spending so much time in a handful of our national parks in this, the year of their 100th anniversary. But we are glad we are doing it. After two years of full-time RVing, we’ve finally arrived at the need for slowness, to enjoy, to savor, and to immerse ourselves in our national parks.
One destination we love to visit is Acadia National Park – that gem of land in Maine. We’d been twice before, once for three days, another for just a day. This is barely enough time to take a sip of what is there. Our most recent trip to Acadia was an eight-day adventure, which included the discovery of a part of the park we did not know existed: the Schoodic Peninsula, way on the north side of the park. You can see it sitting in the waterfront park in Bar Habor, looking directly across the bay. It is a different experience altogether, as the land meeting with the sea reaches out from under the soil and places wide, flat fingers of solid rock out into the ocean. It’s fun to walk on, explore, and just simply admire. It really makes the mind wonder how this all actually came about since all explanations are simply theory. I think having a sense of wonder beats the pants off the geological theories of land creation.
For our stay “in the park”, an RV campground just outside of the Bass Harbor Lighthouse, way down in the southwest corner of Acadia, was just about perfect. It meant a bit more driving but the towns and views were well worth it. Plus we discovered parts of Acadia we would have missed – those tucked away tiny towns with a handful of shops and restaurants. Places where you meet the top professional photographer in his studio, and chat about Acadia and its offerings like friends of years past.
The inland forests make for hikes from the easiest stroll to life-challenging iron rod vertical scrambles. Whichever meets your standard of fitness and daring, you’ll find it here. We passed on the chains and steel rods, and avoided the rappelling classes, thank you very much. But we did hike to the top of Acadia Mountain, a challenging hike up and even more so on the way down. With views to curl your toes, across the forest canopy and out into the lengthy harbors and finally the deep blue ocean that is Acadia. And always surrounding by that musky fir forest smell. Lovely, just lovely.
It’s summertime, and there’s almost no better place to be than the beach. The warmth of the sun upon your face, the sound of waves splashing against the shore, the blue water stretching into the horizon…Let’s go!
In this year of celebrating the 100th anniversary of America’s national park system, which park among the 59 wilderness parks would you name as the best.
so as you move through this massive park, you get to experience them all. Which, of course, makes for simply spectacular fall colors
of one kind or another. Yet due to the diligence of the rangers and volunteers, the wildlife remains just that – wild.
Horseback riding is offered on both the Tennessee and the North Carolina sides.
And the icing on the cake – if you have the strength and stamina – is to combine it all in one superb hike to LeConte Lodge. There you’ll get history, lodging in basic cabins (no electricity or running water), great food to fuel you for the trip down, unique terrain and trees and fauna, mountaintop views you’ll store in your memory bank forever. Plus you’ll step across creeks and endless cascading water, grab onto cables alongside steep cliffs, and maybe even get to see mountain laurel and rhododendrons blooming at Inspiration Point on the way up. Time it right and the falcons will be flying as a complement to the other colorful birds that hang out there.
Nothing quite demonstrates the awesome power and beauty of Mother Nature like a waterfall – hundreds of gallons of water rushing several stories over a cliffside, the vertical stream nestled in lush greenery, the mist and droplets that splash on you at the fall’s base.
Not many travelers have heard of Tokopah Falls, but it’s an incredible site. A series of cascades, it drops 1200 feet – almost the height of the Empire State Building – at California’s Sequoia National Park. It’s a park of tall trees and tall waterfalls.
You can enjoy this waterfall and then a vista at 7200 feet elevation on Grand Teton National Parks’ Hidden Falls-Inspiration Point Trail. The trail runs 3.8-miles round trip into Cascade Canyon. Though technically not a waterfall but a series of cascades running 200 feet over several multiple steps, Wyoming’s Hidden Falls still impresses.
A trail through a lush, old growth forest that ends at this waterfall will delight anyone hiking the Marymere Falls Trail at Olympic National Park in Washington. The 1.6-mile round trip trail really is like taking two entirely different hikes in one. Most of the trail heads through a intensely green Pacific Northwest rain forest while the last portion at the destination is purely about the waterfalls.
This 65-foot waterfalls awaits visitors on the Brandywine Gorge Trail at Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The Brandywine Gorge Trail loops 1.5 miles to the falls then back to the trailhead with several crossings of Brandywine Creek.