Transportation Inside the Parks
Some parks offer free shuttles (Rocky Mountain has a decent but somewhat slow service, Yosemite has a very regular service as does Zion) to cut down on cars in the park and save you from finding parking at the most popular trailheads. Zion doesn’t allow any private vehicles in the park during peak season so everyone has to take the shuttle.
Because we wanted to have our cooler and gear handy during the day, we generally chose to drive to each trailhead. Sometimes we had to loop around the parking lot or park a ways down the road but we were always able to find parking. We generally tried to go to the most popular trailheads late in the afternoon and found that parking was relatively easy at that time of day. It seemed that many people were heading out to dinner or to their hotel so the parking lots and trails really cleared out after about 5pm. Being able to hike until dark is a big plus to camping or staying inside the park!
What to have with you as you explore
Keep a sweatshirt and rain coat or rain poncho for each person in your family in your car all the time. Storms come up randomly or the weather can turn and without these items, you might end up pretty uncomfortable! When you only have a little time to enjoy a park, you don’t want rain or cold to keep you from enjoying the park. Sometimes the most beautiful and least crowded times at a park are during inclement weather. So just bundle up or throw your raincoat on and enjoy!
Have a water bottle for each person in the car and refill them every time you see a spigot so you always have water to drink.
Keep a package of wet wipes in the car all the time – you’ll use them a lot!
Get a small backpack with a water bladder for each family member (recommended ages 8-10 and up). It’s so important to have water with you all the time and it’s so nice to be able to sip water while you walk rather than stopping and getting out a water bottle when you’re thirsty. Dehydration can be dangerous on a long hike – especially if you’re in full sun and there isn’t water available (there was frequently water available at major trailheads but no water was available on trails). Keep drinking all the time!
Stuff to always have inside your backpack
- water
- tissues
- a granola bar or some sort of protein bar
- sunscreen
- chapstick
- little bag of carrots or an apple (some real food is sure nice to have while hiking!)
Shoes
You’ll want two pair of shoes:
- a pair of good hiking shoes (trail running shoes are lightweight and work great but my husband likes good sturdy hiking boots – try out different shoes on some long walks before you head to a national park for a lot of hiking to break in your shoes and make sure what you’re thinking of taking is really comfortable)
- sandals (Chaccos are really perfect – they hold your foot very securely thanks to their unique z-strap system, they mold to your foot so they are really comfortable, they don’t let in a lot of rocks, you can wear them in the water, etc.)
Eating
The most popular parks generally have cafeterias or small grocery stores inside the park and some parks have some very nice restaurants – but buying food inside the park can can involve some crowds and will be quite expensive.
Generally, the best way to eat inside the park is to shop before you enter the park and bring your own food.
It’s very nice to have a cooler in your car where you can store baby carrots, apples, grapes, cucumbers and other healthy snacks. It works great to have bread and peanut butter and jelly in your car along with some knives so you can make sandwiches for lunch without having to go back to your campsite or hotel (or you can make them in advance but we just wanted to get going in the morning without stopping to make sandwiches). You’ll likely want some granola bars, trail mix, and/or protein bars to bring with you on hikes. Plus it’s nice to have some favorite chips, crackers and/or cookies in the car (letting kids know there’s a certain favorite treat waiting in the car for those who are great hikers can be a good motivator!).
Wifi and Cell Service
Wifi and mobile service is quite spotty inside the national parks and some parks (like Mount Rainier) have virtually no cell service. You can usually get a signal or wifi at visitors’ centers and shops in the park but not always! Cell signals are generally stronger if you’re up high on a peak so you may get service at some of the most magestic summits you reach. But don’t plan on it.
In this world where we rely heavily every day on our phones’ quick access to information, navigation systems and calling and texting capabilities, it can be a bit of a challenge to be in a place with no wifi and no signal. But it can be wonderful! Relish the opportunity to tune out the rest of the world and really enjoy time with your family.
If there is information you’d like to be able to access while you’re in a park (like the section of this guide that goes with the park you’re visiting), you’ll want to download it before you enter the park to ensure that you’ll have access to it in the park. Be sure to grab a map of the park when you go through the park entrance and enjoy finding things the old-fashioned way – with a paper map.
You may want to tell friends and family that you won’t be accessible while you visit the park so that they don’t worry if you don’t return their calls or reply to their text messages.
Camping
The campgrounds in the national parks are generally in lovely locations with nice shady trees, fire rings, and picnic tables. The price per night was generally $20-25 (except Mesa Verde – for some reason that one was way more expensive).
Some campgrounds allow only tents. Some allow RVs and trailers as well as tents. Some campgrounds have nice level tent pads ready for tents but most don’t have tent pads so you just find the flattest possible spots to pitch your tents! We had three tents for our family – a 4-man tent for our 4 boys, a small 2-man tent for our daughter, and a 3-man tent for me and my husband (nice to have a little more room than a 2-man tent would provide and we picked a tent we could stand up in – nice to be able to stand up to get dressed…). Sometimes we had to look around for a while to find three relatively flat places for our tents in the appropriate sizes but at every campground we visited, we were able to find good spots for all three tents in our one campsite.
All campgrounds we visited had running water (generally only cold water) in the bathrooms and flush toilets plus spigots for filling containers with drinking water. Some of the bathrooms were pretty dated and not very clean but most were decently clean. There seemed to be adequate facilities so we usually didn’t have to wait to use a toilet or sink.
We found that relatively few national parks campgrounds offered showers and laundry facilities. The showers we did find were not very clean (some were downright disgusting – flip flops came in handy and we tried not to touch the walls!) and were usually operated with tokens that you purchase and that offer you anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes of water before they shut off (and you can insert more money or tokens if you wish). But we were grateful for any sort of shower after a while! When no shower was available, we learned that you can freshen up pretty well with baby wipes/wet wipes if there’s no shower to be found and you’re feeling pretty gross. We also learned that swimming in a river or lake makes you feel a little cleaner!
The laundry facilities we found weren’t that great either – at Crater Lake we had to put our stuff in the drier again and again, using tons of tokens, and still it wasn’t dry so we had to hang it out on a rope strung between trees in our camp (and of course some of it fell off and got dirty all over again…). We learned to live with more dirt on our clothes and bodies than is normal!
Pretty much all the campgrounds we visited had a bear box for each site or a bear box shared between two adjoining sites. The bear box is a metal box where you store all food plus any toiletry items that are scented and could attract bears. It’s sort of a pain having to go over to the bear box to get things but the safety is worth it! In some parks, you can leave food in your car (the car can sort of serve as a bear box). But in other parks, you can only leave food in your car if it’s completely out of sight from the windows and sealed in such a way that it couldn’t be smelled by even the most adept bear. Bears have smashed their way into cars to get food!
We saw one bear – in Yellowstone just off the road when we arrived in the park late at night. There aren’t a lot of incidents of bears causing issues but better safe than sorry!
Camping Gear
We shopped around a lot and ended up getting most of our camping gear at Recreation Outlet where we found a great selection, knowledgeable salespeople, and really good prices. We bought tents, sleeping bags, pads to sleep on, some nice little tripod stools to sit on around the fire, some inexpensive more comfortable folding chairs to use around the fire, a camp stove, and all our other essentials at Recreation Outlet. They were kind enough to donate some camp towels (these are awesome – so small, so absorbent, so quick-drying), some hammocks (made the campsite so much fun), and ……
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Food while Camping
While camping here were some of our favorite tasty and simple meals:
- Paleo Meals to Go – Paleo Meals to Go was kind enough to give us a bunch of meals to test out and we were really very impressed (and I’m pretty picky about food). These freeze-dried meals were very good and each pouch had enough food for two children or one very hungry adult. We found that adding some salt and some garlic powder made the lunches/dinners extra tasty. It’s so easy – you just add some boiling water to the pouch and let it sit for a few minutes, then it’s ready to eat. If you serve one of their meat dishes over rice, it goes further. We thought the breakfasts were super tasty as well and it was so nice to have a break from the oatmeal or eggs that we ate most mornings. Our favorite meals were the Caldera Chicken Curry, Mountain Beef Stew, Canyon Chicken Chili, Palisade Pineapple Mango, and Cliffside Coconut Berry.
- Rice and Beans – If you cook some rice and add a couple cans of black or pinto beans plus a can of tomatoes (crushed or diced), quite a bit of chili powder, and some garlic powder, you’ve got a pretty tasty meal. Top with shredded cheese and sour cream if you like.
- Chicken Tikka Masala – With a jar of pre-made sauce from Trader Joes or elsewhere, a can or two of cooked chicken breast, and some rice, this made a very easy and very tasty meal
- Dried soup mixes – There are many good options for soups. We often added rice and/or a can of crushed tomatoes to make the soup go further and be more filling plus we always added some dried minced onion and garlic powder to add flavor.
Staple non-perishable food items to have on hand:
- Salt and pepper
- Garlic powder
- Rice (minute rice isn’t quite as yummy as regular but it sure is fast!)
- Canned pinto or black beans
- Canned crushed or diced tomatoes
- Canned chicken
- Soup mixes
- Paleo Meals To Go packets or other freeze-dried dinners in pouches (but Paleo was by far the tastiest!)
- Marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate (keep the chocolate in your cooler)
Introduction Video
Videography and editing by Ashton Loosli, age 16
This quick video gives you a glimpse into the very beginning of our Park to Park adventure in 2016.