Grand Canyon area

[kimberh]

We have never been out West. What is the best month to go weather vs crowds? This has always been a dream of ours and it is time to put it into action.

 

[karla63]

Jim, thanks for all your info about nps,etc. We have been there 4 times since 2001 and we are in the midst of planning our 5th and most exciting trip. We are going to try some whitewater rafting down the Colorado either next late spring or early summer. Do you have any info or suggestions as to which outfitter to go with? I have found one that starts at Lee's Ferry and goes for 88 miles and drops you off at Phantom Ranch and then you climb back out. TIA

Karla

 

[kimberh]

Jim, I appreciate all the information you have posted. I have already spent hours on the web site researching the Grand Canyon. Your input has been valuable to me. This is new territory for us! I still feel like I don't have a clue.

 

[JimMIA]

We have never been out West. What is the best month to go weather vs crowds? This has always been a dream of ours and it is time to put it into action.

The "best" time to visit National Parks out west is any time you can go! Seriously, it's hard to pick a month that is the "best" generally.

There might be specific months that are best for one park, but not necessarily all. For example, my favorite time of the year at Yosemite is May, because the kids are still in school and crowds are light, the snow is melting, and the waterfalls are gushing. But if I go too early in May, some of the higher roads and trails may be closed or inaccessible.

A few parks have very short seasons. One of our most beautiful parks is Glacier NP on the Montana/Canada border, but it's only open to visitors during the peak of summer. The rest of the year it's snowed in.

You really have to factor in altitude and weather out West. We have had snowfall at Yellowstone in late July. At many of the parks in the Rockies, the floor of the park may be at 7,500 feet or so. That makes for a much shorter summer, colder temperatures, etc.

Crowds are another issue in many parks. Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon during the summer seem more crowded than midtown Manhattan at lunchtime. Traffic can be horrible at those parks, but may be very light at the North Rim, and down the road from Yellowstone at Grand Teton NP. OTOH, if you get 1/4 mile up many trails you will be completely alone.

Two other factors to consider in planning a western park trip. The first is, there are a LOT of parks out west. Not just National Parks, but National Monuments, Nat'l Recreation Areas, National everything. There is really way too much to try to even scratch the surface on one trip.

The other factor is driving distances. Living in the East, we don't really appreciate the distances sometimes, but you really do have to watch the distances. Just because Colorado and Wyoming are neighboring states doesn't mean you can drive from Mesa Verde NP to Yellowstone in one day.

Another consideration is how you want to see a park. Many people go to the Grand Canyon, drive up to the South Rim, take the obligatory "standing-at-the-rim-of-the-Grand-Canyon" pictures, hit the gift shop, get their National Parks Passport stamped at the Visitor Center...and drive on. And they loved the Grand Canyon! They'll talk about it for years! Those people, in fact, are the typical visitor to Grand Canyon, not the exception.

Other people stay a week, hiking, maybe taking the overnight mule ride to the bottom and back, sitting on the porch at El Tovar watching the sunset, etc. They also love Grand Canyon...but they love it in a different way. There's no right or wrong way to enjoy a park, but the manner in which you approach parks will affect how much time you need to allocate.

I'd recommend you use the Internet to research parks you might be interested in. Do NOT use a search engine to get information specific to a park. You will get old, cached information which will be terribly inaccurate. Go to www.nps.gov and use the search feature (either by name or state) to locate your park.

Each park has its own webpage, and the general convention is www. nps.gov/first four letters of a one-word park name, or first two letters of each word in a two-word park name. For example /yell for Yellowstone, /yose for Yosemite, /ever for Everglades, but /grca for Grand Canyon.

You will find the websites a bit clunky to navigate at first -- you sometimes have to drill down through a lot of layers to find the info you want. But you'll figure it out. All of the parks use the same template, so once you can navigate one, you'll be fine with the others. Some of the websites are quite good. For example, at Glacier you can even take "e-hikes" online! I just looked at them for the first time today, and they are pretty darn cool!

 

[JimMIA]

Do you have any info or suggestions as to which outfitter to go with?

No, but hopefully someone else can. I've never done a raft trip -- still on my to-do list -- so I don't really have any basis for a recommendation.

 

[kimberh]

Jim,
Thanks so much! I will take your advice and search all the parks out. We really want to see Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. We watched the travel channel a few months ago. This must be why we love the WL so much. I am bookmarking this page.

 

[Deb & Bill]

Yellowstone in winter is fantasic. We did Jan in Yellowstone a few years back (okay 15 yrs ago) and had a great time. Temps during the day were 25 below zero and down to 40 below zero at night. Snow must have been several feet deep with paths plowed around the geyer basins. No cars in the park at all, only snowmobiles and snow coaches. The park is soooo quiet and the wildlife is right there. We stayed three nights at Old Faithful Snowlodge and four nights at Mammoth Hot Springs. We drove in through Mammoth and parked the car there for the week. We'd love to do it again.

 

[JimMIA]

Yellowstone in winter is fantasic. We did Jan in Yellowstone a few years back (okay 15 yrs ago) and had a great time. Temps during the day were 25 below zero and down to 40 below zero at night. Snow must have been several feet deep with paths plowed around the geyer basins. No cars in the park at all, only snowmobiles and snow coaches. The park is soooo quiet and the wildlife is right there. We stayed three nights at Old Faithful Snowlodge and four nights at Mammoth Hot Springs. We drove in through Mammoth and parked the car there for the week. We'd love to do it again.

I'd love to go to Yellowstone in the winter, despite all the controversy about the snowmobiles/snowcats.

The two winter trips I want to do most, though, are Yosemite and Grand Canyon. The winter pictures of those two parks are just breathtaking.

 

[Deb & Bill]

I'd love to go to Yellowstone in the winter, despite all the controversy about the snowmobiles/snowcats.

The two winter trips I want to do most, though, are Yosemite and Grand Canyon. The winter pictures of those two parks are just breathtaking.

I'd love for them to ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone. They were the only noise you heard during the day. At night there were almost no sounds.

 

[Pootle]

I'd just like to add my thanks for all the information by JimMia and others in this thread. It will be very valuable next year when my son marries in Las Vegas - we intend spending some time touring NP before the wedding. I've also been to the Grand Canyon and stayed at El Tovar (the rate we paid in February 2006 was $186.40 pn including tax) and we may well visit the northern rim as it will be in August and crowds of midtown Manhattan don't appeal

 

[mathed101]

Thanks for even more info Jim!

We just arrived home from a camping trip and we are so ready to go to more places! We hiked in the mountains with our kids 13, 8 and 4 and they did a fabulous job! We had so much fun finding the lake we were in search of: Bloomington Lake, Idaho. The snow was still in some of the areas along the cliffs, the wild flowers were in bloom, and the crystal clear water was so beautiful and inviting but cold! The drive to get to the trails was gravel and seemed to take forever! When we arrived at the trails we then had to hike a half mile to hit one part of the lake and then another half a mile to hit the larger part. Well worth it! We were so surprised to see so many cows in the forest, crossing the road and the eating the grass along the creek. So cool!! We were like kids in a candy shop! We are really excited that the kids wanted to do more...when will we fit all these trips in and go to Disney too!!

 

[#1minnie]

WOW! Thanks to this thread, I've just spent the last two hours on the internet researching the Grand Canyon and the Tanque Verde Ranch that was also mentioned. they all sound fabulous.

I'd love to do the overnight mule trip, but I seriously doubt by hubby would allow or 9-10 year old daughter to take the trip! He's the worrywart in our family.

Anyone do this with kids yet, at what ages, and how was your experience?

 

[bfosbenner]

Thanks all for the information!!!
I saw a Discovery channel HD show on the Lodges of the National Parks and I realize that that is where I need to stay if possible.

This thread has been helpfull!

 

[mowog]

Be careful booking National Park hotels. (I'm jumping to back of thread so this might have been addressed). If you search for National Park lodging you will get some very official looking sites with official sounding URLs that charge a 10% non-refundable fee. You want the real official site, or call the hotel/lodge itself. We've stayed at El Tovar and have a reservation coming up in Yosemite.

I agree in renting the points and using the cash to stay at the Grand Canyon as an alternative. Dawn and Dusk are beautiful times and the day crowds leave and you have a much quieter time to enjoy the beauty.

Jean and Bob

 

[JimMIA]

Be careful booking National Park hotels. (I'm jumping to back of thread so this might have been addressed). If you search for National Park lodging you will get some very official looking sites with official sounding URLs that charge a 10% non-refundable fee.

This is a great point, and it doesn't apply only to lodging. There are many, many commercial websites out there, many of which are nothing more than travel agents, and they are completely unregulated. When you are dealing with an NPS concessioner inside a park, they are very closely regulated by NPS, and their reservation/cancellation policies are set by contract with NPS...and they're usually pretty liberal.

In addition to lodging issues, if you Google a national park (or use any other search engine), you are almost certain to get links to non-National Park Service sites...because they pay to be listed first. Many of those links are to old, cached pages which have not been updated and they are filled with inaccurate (and sometimes deliberately false) information. At Everglades, we get 3-4 calls a week where the caller has received incorrect or just plain bogus information from some official-sounding website -- and they get mad at us because they think the bad info came from the National Park Service!

NPS websites are notoriously clunky to navigate, but they offer the best and most accurate method to get information on services and activities inside a particular park. Go to www.nps.gov and then use the park search feature on the home page to locate the park you are interested in. When you get to the park you want, look on the left margin for a button that says something like "Plan your visit." When you go to that page, you should find a full menu of ranger and concessioner programs and services, as well as camping and lodging information. AND...it will be accurate.

 

[Deb & Bill]

JimMIA is "da man" on National Parks. Very wise. I should have asked him about airboat rides in the Everglades before we signed on to Speedy Johnson.