10 PARKS TO ESCAPE THE SUMMER CROWDS
Top 10 national parks to escape the crowds
Looking for peace and quiet at big tourism spots like Zion and Yosemite? Writers and environmentalists share alternatives to the most popular sites in the United States.
Park visitation is at a record high — which is good for tourism, not so good for peace and quiet. From Acadia to Zion, Bryce Canyon to Yosemite, leading writers and environmentalists share their alternatives to the most popular spots in the United States. (We’ve listed the top 10 alternatives here. To see a dozen more, go to theguardian.com) 1. The attraction: Acadia National Park, Maine (3.5 million annual visits)
The alternative: Voyageurs National Park, Minn. (237,000 visits)
Location: Northern Minnesota, on the Canadian border
Top place to stay: Camping near Kabetogama Lake, for the incredible quiet
Best entry point: Start paddling from Ash river visitor center
When you think of stunning waterscapes, places like Acadia National Park in Maine and Olympic National Park in Washington likely come to mind. Yet Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota offers some of the same activities with a fraction of the crowds. Almost half the park is water, with more than 500 islands and 655 miles of undeveloped shoreline. As someone who
grew up in the Rockies, lived near the mountains of California and adventured in Alaska, I can tell you that Voyageurs is like no place else.
Start your adventure at either Kabetogama Lake visitor center or Ash River visitor center. Rent a boat, canoe, or kayak and set out for a campsite across the water. If you’re visiting in July, the wild blueberries and raspberries are ripe for picking and make an excellent addition to your campfire pancakes. There is beauty in taking a break from modern conveniences. At Voyageurs, you can wrap yourself in quiet that is both comforting and exhilarating. It’s one of my most favorite aspects of this park: you can literally go an entire day without hearing any human sounds.
Will Shafroth is the president and CEO of the National Park Foundation.
2. The attraction: Biscayne National Park, Fla. (447,000
visits)
The alternative: Dry Tortugas National Park, Fla. (54,000 visits)
Location: Garden Key and six other small islands, 68 miles west of Key West, Fla.
Where to stay: A rustic campsite (BYO tent, charcoal, water, flashlight, and food in a varmintproof container)
Best sight: Sunrise and star rise over Florida Bay
If you yearn for more solitude than that afforded by Biscayne National Park, head to the other end of the Florida Keys coral archipelago: Dry Tortugas National Park.
Three centuries after Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León named the islands Tortugas for the sea turtles — they still nest there — Fort Jefferson was built from 16 million bricks. Construction stretched over 30 years, done largely by enslaved, quarantined, or imprisoned laborers. The fort was never finished and never saw combat. It was abandoned by the military, and its grim history ended in 1908, when it became a nature reserve. Like so many of our national parks, this beautiful place was once seared with human misery. Today, nature has restored peace on Garden Key. The country’s only breeding colony of magnificent frigatebirds lives here, having moved west when development encroached on their former rookery, closer to Key West.
Garden Key is 40 minutes via seaplane or three hours via ferry from Key West. There isn’t much to do here, which is precisely the allure. Watch pelicans and cormorants dive for fish, read books, and revel in absolute inaccessibility. Wander the massive fort’s bastions, battlements, ramparts, moats and lighthouse. The play of ocean light on the red-brick walls and the contrast with cadmium-green waters will mesmerize.
Late each afternoon, the ferry and seaplane spirit away daytrippers and the island belongs to the few campers. Sit on the sand beach or moat wall and watch frigatebirds soar, scarlet balloons at their throats, as the sun burns from sky to sea. A thick cloak of stars and silence unfurls over endless water, a sliver of beach, your tent, and nothing else.
Wendy Call has been a writerin-residence at five national parks, co-edited “Telling True Stories” and is the author of “No Word for Welcome.”
3. The attraction: Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah (2.6
million visits)
The alternative: Grand Staircase-escalante National Monument, Utah (983,000 visits)
Location: Southern Utah, about 200 miles northeast of Las Vegas
Top places to camp: Anywhere in the backcountry (with a permit) or at the developed campgrounds near the tiny town of Boulder
Best hikes: Explore a classic slot canyon like Zebra, Peek-aboo, or Spooky
Utah is unrivaled for soul-juddering landscapes — untamed scenery that has defined the West in everything from John Ford’s films to HBO’S “Westworld.” I fell hard for this land of red rock and sculpted geology while just a wide-eyed teen from Jersey, and I’ve never tired of exploring it — along with the millions who visit Utah’s marquee national parks each year. for an equally unforgettable experience, visit the Grand Staircase-escalante National Monument, which was designated 22 years ago by then-president Bill Clinton. The monument includes literally the last lands to be mapped in the continental U.S., and most of them remain just how the cartographers found them.
(Note: By presidential proclamation, Donald Trump has attempted to split the almost 1.9 million-acre monument into three much smaller parts to allow drilling and mining. That’s being challenged in court by the Sierra Club and others. So for now, these unspoiled lands remain accessible to the public.)
Grand Staircase–escalante is huge and wild, so stop at one of the visitor centers on the monument’s two main paved highways to get oriented. You’ll find them in the towns of Kanab and Big Water (Highway 89) and in Escalante and Cannonville (Highway 12). Just driving these highways is astoundingly scenic. In dry weather, most cars can manage the gravel loop known as Hell’s Backbone between the town of Boulder near the monument’s northern border and Escalante, 30 miles to the south, but don’t expect to make good time no matter what you’re driving. You’ll want to stop at every scenic viewpoint to gape anyway.
Hell’s Backbone might whet your appetite to investigate more of the monument’s unpaved byways, such as Hole-inthe-rock Road, which dates back to the Mormon wagon trains. It’s located about 5 miles southeast of Escalante on Highway 12. Four-wheel drive is recommended for such explorations, but even then be aware that wet weather could turn your track into a quagmire or worse. Hikers and backpackers will want to check out some of the monument’s gorgeous slot canyons. Several spectacular ones are accessible from Hole in the Rock Road. Bring paper maps — your phone won’t help you here.
Michael Brune is executive director of the Sierra Club.
4. The attraction: Canaveral National Seashore, Fla. (1.6
million visits)
The alternative: Cumberland Island National Seashore, Ga. (52,000 visits)
Location: About 35 miles north of Jacksonville, Fla.
Best place to stay: The amenities at Sea Camp — restrooms, cold showers and potable water — are welcome after a day hiking in coastal wilderness, though reservations are a must.
Most amazing hike: Take Parallel trail from the ferry dock north toward Roller Coaster trail.
Cumberland is wild magic, the southernmost and largest in a chain of barrier islands along the Georgia coast. Its forests are dominated by wind-tortured live oaks draped with Spanish moss and greened by resurrection fern, gnomish and ceaselessly amazing. Painted buntings and summer tanagers flash among cabbage palms. Beyond whitesand dunes held in place by sea oat and beach morning glory, the restless Atlantic rises and falls in dramatic tidal fluctuations, ebbing 6 to 8 feet. In summer, loggerhead sea turtles lumber ashore to scoop out enormous nests, from which hatchlings emerge and drift out to sea.
The 18-mile-long island is accessible only by ferry or private boat, and I advise starting at the mainland town of St. Marys. Because Cumberland is long and narrow, hikes will take you toward its wild north end. A walk through the ruins of Dungeness, a mansion constructed in the 19th century, is highly recommended. Summer is almost unbearably hot, so I propose spring or fall, when Pelican Banks is thick with rafts of shorebirds such as ruddy terns and American oystercatchers. You may want to treat yourself to a night or two at private Greyfield Inn, halfway up the island.
It is the profoundly beautiful salt creeks that ever call me back to Cumberland. Below a 20-foot bluff overlooking a continent of marsh grasses, a kingfisher dives into Christmas Creek. The water, though opaque, is so alive with shrimp and mullet and oysbut ters that it wiggles, thrashes and mutters as it rises and falls with the moon.
Janisse Ray has written five books of nature writing, including “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.”
5. The attraction: Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska (643,000 visits) The alternative: Wrangell-st.
Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska (68,000 visits) Location: Southern Alaska Best play to stay: Kennicott Glacier Lodge
Top trail: Root glacier trail, a four-mile hike winding beside Root and Kennicott glaciers
Wrangell-st. Elias is a vast, remote, and rarely visited wilderness of mountains and icefields, alpine valleys and glacial rivers. At 13.2 million acres, it’s the nation’s largest national park and protected wilderness; it’s also part of the largest protected international wilderness left on the planet. It firmly reminds you of humanity’s essential dispensability even as it opens you to your own vastness.
The adventures are unlimited: you can backpack, flight-see, mountain-climb, river-raft, or simply wander trails near the quirky Alaskan town of Mccarthy in the heart of the park. Whatever you choose, the experience begins on the drive there. It’s a full day through an astonishment of mountains, rivers and glaciers. Perhaps the most luminous is at the confluence of the Copper and Chitina rivers, where dipnetters clinging to high bluffs fish for red salmon. The Chitina scribes the fault line that gave rise to the park’s peaks, some of North America’s highest.
Here your route enters the park, for 60 miles of a narrow, often nasty, summer-only dirt road — one to be driven slowly. My first time, sharp rocks blew out two tires. Take it easy; stop at a lake and listen for loons or trumpeter swans. The last leg you’ll do sans car, walking a footbridge across the roiling Kennicott River.
Spend some time in Mccarthy and drop in at the Golden Saloon. Tour the Kennecott copper mine and ghost town. Hike beside Root Glacier, marveling at cerulean crevasses marching off to the horizon. Continue as the white-crowned sparrow’s melody urges you farther upvalley, to views of the Stairway Icefall, a magnificent ice formation spilling 6,000 feet off Mount Regal. Then, go farther.
Marybeth Holleman is the author of “The Heart of the Sound” and “Among Wolves.”
6. Another alternative to Denali: Bering Land Bridge National
Preserve (3,000 visits)
Location: North of Nome, Alaska
Top place to stay: In Shishmaref, arrange accommodation through locals.
Best hike: From Shishmaref, trace climate change along the rapidly eroding Chukchi Sea coast.
You may find yourself holding a gun for the first time not far from the Bering Land Bridge Natural Preserve. You may be with your father, who accoutered himself with a weapon in case you encountered bears, wolverines or worse. You may not be in search of game, but perspective, as you clamber up the slopes of the mountain called Grand Singatook. You may hope to see the preserve from up high and to glimpse Ugiuvak across the Bering Sea, the island of my mother’s childhood and home to my ancestors for countless generations until the the federal government closed the island’s school in 1959. You may bear your toddler son on your back and your younger son in the womb. Your father may offer to carry his grandson and encourage you to take his canteen and firearm. You may hold the gun and regret it, and switch back. You may pause to note snow arnica nodding its battered bloom, stray bones and shed antlers, inuksuit. The land is truly sacred, and the mountain a weather-maker. From it, one may begin to comprehend our vast Inuit lands and the stories of survival inscribed within them.
Within the preserve, you may visit the 100,000-acre Imuruk volcanic fields or Serpentine Hot Springs (Iyat in Inupiat) amid granite spires. Or you may remain on the life-thrumming coast. On the final night of my 2015 trip, we traveled along the Chukchi Sea coast toward Ikpek lagoon, across eroding strands of fine sand beaches. I was on foot, despite having had hip surgery some weeks before, and suffering through a cough that would later result in a positive TB test. We built a driftwood bonfire and gathered starfish, shells, even plastic trash. The lagoon was still. We saw neither polar bear, nor walrus, nor seal. Neither did we visit whales on their migrations, yet the blue-white churn of the Chukchi Sea seemed to afford me and the dozen Inupiaq children who chose to spend the evening in the company of their visitors a moment to consider the cerements of the sea and our rightful, if imperiled, place on its shores.
Joan Naviyuk Kane has authored nine books and lives in Alaska with her sons.
7. The attraction: Gettysburg National Military Park, Pa. (1 million visits)
The alternative: Manassas National Nattlefield Park, Va. (606,000 visits)
Location: 30 miles west of Washington, D.C.
On Veterans Day last November, I traveled to one of my favorite hidden gems: Manassas National Battlefield Park. Situated a short drive west from Washington, D.C., on Interstate 66, the battlefield is located in Manassas, Va. Manassas was home to two significant battles in the civil war, including the first battle of Bull Run, and is part of America’s military history. I rode a horse through the battlefield, taking in the sights and sounds of a now-peaceful landscape that once saw intense fighting between fellow countrymen.
I was amazed at how visitors could see the way the terrain shaped the battle and troop movements over 150 years ago. I was also encouraged to see engaged volunteers rebuilding fences and maintaining the park. There were scout groups and school classes learning about the history and nature, families enjoying hikes on the park’s more than 45 miles of trails, and senior citizens taking advantage of the more than 20 miles of paved roads for driving tours.
Manassas National Battlefield Park is one of many lesserknown parks that are worth a visit. Our national parks tell the story of America’s history, people and land. Many Americans do not have to travel very far to enjoy one of these treasures — in some cases, they are just down the street. I encourage all Americans to get outside and enjoy a park this summer with their families. Ryan Zinke is the U.S. secretary of the Interior.
8. The attraction: Glacier National Park, Mont. (3.3 million visits)
The alternative: North Cascades National Park, Wash. (30,000 visits)
Location: Newhalem, Wash., 110 miles northeast of Seattle
Where to sleep: Goodell Creek Campground, small and central, along the Skagit River
Best hikes: Hidden Lake Trail (strenuous), Maple Pass Trail (moderate)
Glacier National Park, located in the Rocky Mountains of Mont., is home to 26 glaciers, a world-famous scenic drive, a healthy wolf and grizzly population, and a rare triple Continental Divide. North Cascades, about two hours northeast of Seattle, houses over 300 glaciers, more than any other U.S. park outside Alaska. It has the wildlife: black bears, marmots, wolverines, gray wolves, eagles and osprey. It has the glacier-fed alpine lakes, the steep mountain peaks, the backpacking routes and the scenic drives. What it does not have: crowds.
Known as the American Alps, the North Cascades is a hiker’s dream, with hundreds of miles of trails for day hikers, backpackers and mountaineers alike. North Cascades was the 40th park we visited during our whirlwind year of visiting all 59 national parks, finishing up on the National Park Service centennial in August 2016. We had traveled north from the much-loved parks along the West Coast and were ready for a break from humanity. North Cascades gave us what we needed: During our long day hike on the Fourth of July trail, switchbacking through miles of quiet forest, stepping over waterfalls that crossed our path, and eating lunch with peek-aboo glacier views, we saw fewer than five other hikers.
Much of the hiking was inaccessible and snow-covered when we visited in early May, but peaceful camping in the nearlyempty Newhalem Campground, lower-elevation hiking to spots like Thunder Knob and Ross Dam, and stunning views straight off the road at Diablo Lake overlook and all along the North Cascades Highway made for a good consolation.
In August 2015, Cole and Elizabeth Donelson quit their jobs to visit all 59 U.S. national parks.
9. The attraction: Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Calif. (15 million visits) The alternative: Point Reyes
National Seashore, Calif. (2.5 million visits)
Location: Point Reyes Station, Calif., 40 miles north of San Francisco
Top place to stay: Check out the Point Reyes Lodging Association
Best hike: Chimney Rock trail (1.75 miles round trip), for a chance to see marine life and wildflowers
If you want to experience the natural beauty preserved just outside of the urban San Francisco Bay Area, drive just 90 min- utes north. Visit the Point Reyes National Seashore on a good day and you may see elephant seals, tule elk or migrating gray whales. Round a corner on its 150 miles of hiking trails and catch a view of white caps on the Pacific. From February to late August, enjoy spectacular wildflower blooms along the hillsides and in the valleys. In winter, keep an eye out for red and white-speckled fly agaric mushrooms or the booted knight mushroom.
If you’re up for a 14-mile roundtrip hike (beginning at the Bear Valley Visitors Center), you might be able to view Alamere Falls. When the tide is high, Alamere Falls cascades over a 30-foot shale cliff directly into the Pacific Ocean. Known as a tidefall, it’s one of only two waterfalls of its kind in California. You’ll probably prefer to arrive at low tide. Then, you have a better chance of approaching the falls along the exposed sand of Wild Cat Beach, but even if you can’t get right up to the falls, your journey there and back is sure to be breathtaking.
For a less strenuous day, try a stroll to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. History buffs can take a 0.8 mile walk from the Bear Valley Visitor Center to see a replica of a Coast Miwok village, while thrill-seekers can hike the 0.6 mile Earthquake Trail to see evidence along San Andreas fault zone of the time when the Point Reyes Peninsula jolted 20 feet toward the northwest. This park is, after all, just a little over an hour’s drive from San Francisco, where much of the human drama of that 1906 earthquake unfolded.
Camille T. Dungy is editor of “Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.”
10. The attraction: Grand Canyon National Park (6.3 million visits)
The alternative: The canyon’s lesser-known North Rim
Location: 210 miles from Flagstaff, Ariz.
Top places to stay: Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim or North Rim Campground; reserve ahead
Best hike: North Kaibab Trail into the Grand Canyon
Caveat: The North Rim closes between Oct. 15 and May 15
It’s a faded 1970s Polaroid memory now: my first American road trip in a boyfriend’s family station wagon, the start of a 40year love affair with national parks. A drive across California’s Mojave desert, a night in Zion, then south to the quiet high country of the North Rim, where 2 billion years of Earth history twists, turns and sheers into impossible complexity, sculpted by wind and water. We peered into the mile-deep abyss and spent hours sitting on the verandah of the historic stone lodge, the world’s most scenic porch, trying to make sense of this immensity of time and space. Then as night fell, we threw sleeping bags in the back of the wagon and were lulled to sleep by the whooshing of canyon winds stirring the pines.
Only 10 percent of park visitors travel to the North Rim, and it’s still quiet. It’s a storied landscape that has attracted Ancestral Puebloans, polygamous Mormon pioneer ranchers and adventurers like Buffalo Bill, who accompanied a shooting party of British nobles through the area in 1892.
Traveling north on 89A, you’ll pass through the Navajo Nation and enjoy sweeping views of the Painted Desert and Hopi mesas, remnants of the area’s volcanic past. Marble Canyon offers a first view of the Colorado River and glimpses of river runners. At Lees Ferry, visit Lonely Dell Ranch, where the banished Mormon elder John D. Lee operated a ferry in the mid-1800s, then paddle in the water and scramble up a trail high into the Vermilion Cliffs.
The road winds onto the Kaibab Plateau, and the first ponderosa pines appear on limestone cliffs At the North Rim turnoff, stop at Jacob Lake Inn for a slice of the famous pie that moved an enraptured Buffalo Bill to declare: “I kiss the hand that made the pie.”
Nicky Leach is the author of “Insight Guides: Arizona and Grand Canyon” and more than 60 visitor guides.