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There are over 60 national parks in the United States—and they're never more popular than at the peak of summer. This year, however, might look a little bit different as a result of sweeping budget cuts that impact everything from how the trails are maintained to the park rangers who guide you. To help us understand what to expect—and plan our next trip—associate articles director and podcast regular, Megan Spurrell, joins host Lale Arikoglu to parse the nuances of the national parks, like which ones are lesser-trafficked and why, to how to be a thoughtful visitor, and shares the best things to do at some of her favorites.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and with me in the Women Who Travel studio today is Traveler's associate articles director, Megan Spurrell.
Megan Spurrell: Hi.
LA: My travel partner, my hiking partner. My surfing partner.
MS: It's true.
LA: Oh, and desk partner, I'm going to say.
MS: We sit a foot away from each other every day.
LA: We never part, we never part.
Megan, we kicked off the year talking about our best places to go in 2025. I know listeners loved it. And this time we're focusing on all things summer, more specifically how to get the most out of US national parks this summer and how to choose them and where to go. Planning a parks trip, as we know, can be overwhelming at the best of times, thanks to so many choices, but this year is unique due to the funding cuts that have resulted in staff reductions that are impacting everyone from workers at visitor centers to those who are maintaining the trails and even the park rangers.
You've been overseeing a ton of our national parks coverage and you also cover so much of the outdoors for us. But before we talk about this summer and why it's different, I want to know what your top three national parks are and whether you can choose.
MS: There's over 60 national parks, which I'm not sure the average American even knows, but top would be Arches in Utah, just the crazy red rock formations, big red sandstone arches, that very iconic, dramatic Utah scenery.
LA: I'd kind of argue what, at least for me as a foreigner who moved to America, kind of what I thought of as the national parks, that's what I envisioned was going to a national park, was going to those landscapes.
MS: Yes, very traditional, driving through sort of desert lands, big blue, open sky, and just these crazy rock formations that almost look like petrified waves. So that's Arches. And then, okay, so I love Acadia. I know we both love Acadia National Park.
LA: Yes, I was going to, well, I have to noodle on mine and I will not reveal them right away, but Acadia is up there for me.
MS: Yeah, it's just I think having grown up in California, moving to New York, and then seeing that if you keep driving towards Canada, there's this dramatic coastline that still feels similar and different from Northern California, which is very nostalgic for me, but the kind of rocky outcroppings going into the ocean, forests right up to the beach kind of thing. I think Acadia is gorgeous in that way.
LA: Well, I actually saw Big Sur before I saw Maine, and when I went to Maine for the first time and went to Acadia and was driving along the coast to get there, to me I was like, oh, this is the Big Sur of the East Coast. This is equally as kind of rugged and dramatic and beautiful and still feels quite untouched and peaceful, even though obviously it's a very, very well-trafficked national park and is next to a bustling tourist town, Bar Harbor, which is a destination in its own right.
MS: Definitely. And the third national park that I love is Redwoods. My earliest childhood memories are being dragged on camping or park trips where I just think my parents really wanted to show us the beautiful nature that California had. And I think seeing these gigantic trees that your car can drive through some of them, they're just so big-
LA: And so old.
MS: They're so old, they're so tall. And I think to be a small child and look up and just be like, I have to lean my neck so far back, I'm going to fall over trying to see this thing, is amazing.
LA: It's funny because I think in a sort of relatively self-deprecating, but also I'm not going to say narrow-minded way, but maybe unseeing way, a lot of Americans say, "Well, we don't really have anything old here." And you have some of the most ancient trees in the world.
MS: Some redwoods can live up to 4,000 years old. They are one of the oldest things in the country, which is kind of amazing.
LA: Beautiful.
As I said, I need a minute to think about mine, but we will get back to what parks and where my parks are, I promise. How do you choose? Obviously everyone is different and going to be looking for different experiences. What are some basic criteria if you're choosing a park and planning a trip to ask yourself about as you're making these decisions, things for people to remember?
MS: So I would think about the group that you're traveling with, if you're not going alone. Everyone has different fitness levels, mobility needs, and when we're talking about summer, some of these parks are very hot, which not only can be physically difficult for some people, but not always enjoyable. So just thinking about what you're actually up for.
LA: What are some of the different options that are really different? Show me the breadth of them.
MS: Let me give you a few. So Dry Tortugas, that's in the Florida Keys. We're talking like tropical beaches. You can do kayaking and camping, you can go on boat excursions, you can go snorkeling.
LA: Sounds amazing. Sounds like my kind of trip.
MS: I think about it all the time. I don't know why I haven't gone. For years, I've been like, that's exactly my interests just ramming into each other. So that's a very different type of park experience. There's Isle Royale in Michigan, kind of in the upper peninsula. That's another place where you're going to be arriving by water and it's a very different type of landscape. So there the activities might be more kayaking or stargazing. I think you can even see the Northern Lights there at the right time of year.
And then there's some places like the Grand Canyon, which might have been the first national park I ever went to, but of course there's a lot of hiking, there's horseback riding, there's all kinds of stuff, but it's also satisfying to drive up and just see that view. That's an experience. So I think especially when you think-
LA: Honestly, when I think about the Grand Canyon, I don't think about horseback riding or any of those activities. It is just going to see the sheer spectacle of it.
MS: I try and choose parks that I think are going to be less visited, and the National Park Service shares a list of the most and least visited parks every year. So you can look at last year and literally go to the bottom, see the ones that had the fewest visitors, because if they're a national park, they're obviously of some value.
LA: Well, and I was going to ask that because I'm like, why are some least visited?
MS: I mean, some of them are harder to reach. So Denali in Alaska, it takes a bit of effort to get there.
LA: Fun fact about Denali, it is the only national park in the country that uses sled dogs.
MS: Really?
LA: Yes.
MS: You would know.
LA: We'll have to find out if the dogs still have their jobs.
MS: When we were talking about visitation, different experiences offered at national parks are really incredible and help you understand what you're seeing. But this summer, a number of parks are scaling them back, given staffing shortages and proposed budget cuts that have gotten in the way of their usual offerings.
So many people forget that the National Park System is a government institution, but it is something we take for granted. We expect that it's there. The current presidential administration has announced at the start of the year that they had proposed cuts to a lot of different parks that could result in losing visitor centers. It already resulted in staffing shortages because there were huge layoffs. So a lot of rangers and people who work on the forest service, maybe clearing trails, a lot of people lost their jobs.
LA: That person who might have told you that a trail is too challenging is now not there to tell you that.
MS: Yeah, they might not be there. And because of those changes, which I think concerned a lot of people who love the parks, like me, there's then been a greater rollout that we still don't fully know the effect of. So while there was all the turmoil of a bunch of people being laid off, well, those were also people who hired seasonal workers who support these parks in the really busy summer season that we're all talking about. So there might be a certain number of rangers on staff year round, but then they call in for backup when they know everyone is going to be at Yellowstone.
Because of the layoffs, all those processes got really delayed. So some parks either haven't begun hiring for seasonal support, they didn't at all, they don't have the budget to, and the parks have been overburdened for a while. I mean, just looking back to COVID, so many more people want to go to them. A lot of people say we're loving them to death. So many people want to be in the parks, and it's so much more than they can support and the infrastructure has already struggled to keep up. So we're just seeing a strain on resources that were already at capacity.
And I think in some places the visitor center, like Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is really beloved. They have this visitor center up at Alpine Ridge, which is a high altitude pass, and they have just delayed the opening for the season, which is like we're at the end of May, now recording. People are out there. It's a time to be hiking. So the Alpine Visitor Center, I mean perhaps most importantly has a bathroom, which when you're in a national park, it's very nice to have access to a visitor center that has a restroom you can use.
LA: There was one I used where it wasn't a visitor center, it was on a campsite in a park in California, and it did have a bee infestation.
MS: Oh, I thought you were going to say something so much worse. I thought you were going to say there was a bear or something.
LA: No, but I don't know. You're trying to go to the loo in the morning and you've got bees swarming around you. My personal nightmare. Not my finest moment.
MS: I told you that I tried to use a restroom in the great outdoors in Brazil and a frog jumped out so-
LA: When I, not to compete, but when I was in the Maasai Mara, there was a bat.
MS: True, but it wasn't flying up out of the toilet that you sat on.
LA: It was living in the toilet. This was a different bat.
MS: Okay. Well, you're not allowed to go to any of these restrooms anymore. You have to go to something really organized.
LA: I need something plush, more [inaudible 00:09:49] for me.
MS: But you know, there's a gift shop. And if you're not someone who's used to having every single thing you need when you're in the outdoors, so when you go to a national park, even though you should be bringing snacks, water, medicine that you might need, everyone forgets stuff. It's very nice to have a point where you can go and either stock up on something you forgot, get a hold of a water fountain, whatever. It's simple things, but it actually really changes the experience, and makes it accessible to people who don't know how to pack a day bag and everything they need or just didn't even think to.
LA: Or might not actually feel like they can carry a day bag with everything they need because there's actually quite a lot of stuff you've got to carry around with you.
MS: Yeah, and especially if you're talking about families who have kids. And it's nice to have a place that you can go check in, and especially if you're confused by maps that explain all the different trails, it's good to go get oriented and these visitor centers really tie the park experience together. It's like the difference between being at a hotel with concierge, being in an Airbnb. It's like, okay, you better be really comfortable being in that city on your own, which is fine if you are, but if you're not, you might want someone to tell you where to go.
LA: Going back to what you were saying about we all sort of take the park system for granted, it's just this beautiful, wonderful thing that's there that theoretically everyone can visit and experience in the country. I think people forget that it also takes millions of workers to keep them operational and keep them to the standards that we have become used to. That's so many jobs and characters and people who have stories and people who care about the outdoors and looking after these parks.
MS: Yeah. And I think by having multiple people in a park, you also get different perspectives on the place. So if you go to a park and there are multiple rangers that you interact with, you're getting different sides of this very rich place. So at Mount Rushmore for example, I know that there was for years, I'm forgetting his name, but there was a really well-known Native American guide and he actually gave his perspective on the men's faces carved into the rock, which actually had been a pretty important rock to people who'd lived in the area for a long time. And so having that additional people that you're interacting with who can share their version of things is really meaningful, especially in a country as complicated as the United States.
LA: And it crosses generations as well. I mean, I was thinking of the Park Ranger Betty Reed Soskin-
MS: Yes.
LA: ... who has retired. I just checked.
MS: Finally? Oh my gosh.
LA: She retired in 2022 at the age of 100. She was the oldest serving national park ranger. And just to encounter someone who has literally a century of life experience who is out in the park, accessible for you to talk to and hear stories from, that's pretty special.
MS: It's incredible.
LA: Are there cuts being made that's going to change people's experiences who perhaps use a wheelchair or have other needs?
MS: Yeah, I think yes. One of the benefits of the visitor center is some of them give talks where you're not actually leaving the visitor center or you're maybe sitting right outside. And so that allows someone who maybe isn't going to be climbing into the depths of the Grand Canyon to be in a visitor center that they can access, where they can learn about everything they're seeing outside the windows or by driving through the park, because you're not getting the ranger and putting them in your car with you.
So I feel like these talks are really helpful, or for people with small children who might not be able to travel throughout kind of the back country. So yeah, it's that information that is offered in the visitor centers and around them.
LA: Coming up, there may be people listening who want to get away from a campground and don't like the idea of using a toilet that has a frog or a bat in it and are considering a hotel. So more on that after the break.
Welcome back to my chat with Traveler's very own Meghan Spurrell. This year you may not want to stay within the park, given all of the shortages, and consider going outside. There are plenty of hotels and glamping sites that are amazing bases to use to drive in and out of the park during the day.
MS: It's always been the case that if you want to go to a popular national park, especially for camping, if you want to camp in Acadia, which I know we've both done, or when I camped in Yosemite, it is like concert tickets. There's a time and day that they open, usually working back from, so it might be 30 days before you want to be there, whatever, and you have to be on the computer, ready to go and hit book on whatever you see. So if you want to go somewhere that everyone else is going, you for some part of the trip are going to have to be planning far in advance.
That said, I love a good concert. I am not going to see Beyonce because I don't have the patience for that. I got in the queue for Bad Bunny, I slammed my laptop shut. I can't do it. If you're looking at a park that has a ton of reservations and you've either already missed the window or you don't have the stomach for it, the truth is you don't have to do that.
LA: All my favorite national park experiences have involved camping. It's something I've come to I feel like a little late. I never camped growing up and I've learned to love it. But I do love a good hotel. It might be worth considering looking to stay somewhere that's not inside the park, even if usually you are more inclined to camp.
If you don't fancy roughing it or maybe you do for a few days and then you want to have a little bit of comfort at the end of your national parks trip, what are some parks that have great hotels near them or hotels that are kind of imbued with the sense of the place? Because you also want something that reminds you of where you are.
MS: Exactly. You don't want to feel completely detached from the park you've come so far to visit. So there's a number of glamping brands that are making it possible to have a really comfortable stay close to a national park. So there's Under Canvas, which kind of does safari style, tents that have a real bed inside. I know you've stayed at one.
LA: I will caveat that for the shower you do still have to pull on a chain so you can still feel a little bit outdoorsy, even if someone is then lighting the fire for you.
MS: Exactly. There's AutoCamp, which they do a mix of Airstreams and little cabins. There's individual places like the resort at Paws Up in Montana. So you can look for these. We actually have a number of lists for almost every big national park. We have a list of where to stay nearby, so check that out on cntraveler.com.
But yeah, I think it's an exciting trend because accommodations inside parks often are those campsites you kind of have to fight for, or there might be some old concessionaire who's been there for a million years. And again, it's limited and it's one type of lodge. So if it's not what you want, you have to look outside the park bounds.
LA: Lots of people tackle the national parks with RVs. Can you road trip through entire national parks because they're open 24 hours, right?
MS: It depends.
LA: Open in terms of you can get in and out.
MS: It depends. Roads at certain parks close at certain times. The way that the entrances and the boundaries of the parks are managed varies a lot. They do have park hours, but obviously some people are camping in the parks, so they are there all day. But if you want a road trip, what I would do is get out one of the maps that you can find online of the national parks and look at where you can maybe connect a few.
One of the places people most commonly do this is Utah because there's a cluster of national parks. So you can go from Bryce to Zion to Grand Staircase-Escalante, but because of that it's so busy, and especially if you maybe have older family members or if you're older yourself and don't want to be in extreme heat in the summer, that's probably not the place, but maybe you look at the Pacific Northwest where you can link a few spots and be in kind of a cooler environment.
I also think in the Southeast it's going to get hot in summer, but you can still find places that are maybe slightly more wooded, more shady. And I think those are nice places for road trips too because there are really scenic roads going through Shenandoah or the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. So you can actually look up scenic drives that cut through national parks.
LA: After the break, with everything we've just talked about in mind, how to be a thoughtful traveler and take more stewardship of the trails.
And we're back with MS. I think when we think about parks, we think hiking, we think being super outdoorsy and you're going on some sort of trek and maybe have to be a certain fitness level for example, or have a certain set of interests in the outdoors. We both like to hike. I am thinking of hikes. We have also hiked together. We hiked part of Machu Picchu, which is not many friends and co-workers can say that.
But I think I find it hard to, for example, I'll use that app AllTrails to try and decide how I'm going to do my hike and where to do it. And it's very hard to discern if something is actually difficult. I've been wronged by the app sometimes where it says something is moderate and it's actually felt really difficult. That did happen to me in the Himalayas, which is maybe an extreme example, but what are your tricks for figuring out if you can tackle a trail and if a park is going to be too strenuous or just not what you're looking for and not in the mood for?
MS: Yeah, so I think at most parks you'll, if you look at their maps and lists of trails, there's usually something called a loop. The loop often is an easy, flat walk, often paved as well. So wheelchair users can go on those. A few years ago we did, you probably remember a guide on cntraveler.com that was about exploring national parks by wheelchair. So something we highlighted is a lot of parks that have loops, which are usually less than a mile. So when you see that word, look for something under a mile and often mentioned as being paved or flat. That's a nice walk for really anyone to pull up with a car and either walk or roll your way around and get a sense of the landscape at this place.
From there, parks will tell you what the difficulty level is and I trust them the most because they really don't want someone to get out of their depth and then have to be rescued by them. So it's sort of like when you're skiing, if you ask a ski instructor or someone who is at ski patrol which hill you can go up, they'll try and discourage you from doing anything too challenging because it becomes their problem. So you can lean on rangers and posted signs when you find them.
Otherwise, with AllTrails, I would look for things that have a lot of reviews and if they have a lot of reviews, you can typically trust them. But you can also do Googling and we have lists of the best hikes in a number of national parks and we really try to be brutally honest about the difficulty level.
LA: I found the AllTrails reviews to be very useful, but also to be like anything on the internet, which is a [inaudible 00:21:00] of people complaining that a trail is too muddy or that it rained.
MS: Well, but remember, that's how you escape the crowds. That's it. I don't want to be on the trail with them.
LA: Okay, that is great.
MS: And one more thing is elevation gain.
LA: Actually, that's a really good point because something might look pretty easy, but the elevation gain can completely knock you for [inaudible 00:21:23].
MS: Exactly. And that's why it's like if you see something that's one mile but has a really high elevation gain, of all the different things, and it's hard to put a number on what's high, but just start looking at a few different things in the park, one mile with a huge gain, you could literally just be hiking up an essential cliff, whereas you could go 10 miles totally flat in pleasant weather conditions and it's very different. So look at that.
And I would say, I know we were talking about Cadillac Mountain and Acadia as being a mountain, but if you're from the West, that's a hill. That is like, I'm like, okay. And I think that's another thing, is understanding where you are. In the West, a lot of the hikes are going to have a lot of elevation gain. So just being prepared.
LA: Bryce Canyon being I think a good example of that.
MS: Exactly. And Yosemite, you can be going upwards for days. So just having a sense of really understanding the upwards distance here or downward that you're going to have to travel,
LA: Particularly if you haven't experienced that sort of elevation before because people react to it in such different ways. I'm thinking of when we were in Machu Picchu and some people weren't feeling the altitude at all and other people were really struggling with it. So it's also about knowing your body and knowing if that's something that impacts you.
MS: And always bring way more water than you think you need because that's how you keep yourself feeling well.
LA: I want to talk specifically about the trails. We've touched on this a little bit, but how are the changes going to affect them and what the hiking experience will be? We were talking about the visitor centers and the toilets, but the trails themselves, you think of it as being part of nature and it does its own thing, but there are workers who have been maintaining them, who look after them. Are we going to have to be a little bit more responsible than in previous years or should it be that we should already be following a responsible rule of thumb?
MS: You should already be following a responsible rule of thumb. You should be leaving no trace. You should be taking only photos and memories, et cetera.
LA: When you say leave no trace, can you define that? Because I think a lot of people just think it's not dropping litter.
MS: When you walk into nature, when you walk out, it should look the exact same. So don't be carving your initials into a tree. Don't be, I mean definitely don't be leaving your litter. Just leave it exactly as you found it, if not better. Maybe you see trash someone else dropped and you pick that up and take it with you because you can do that.
LA: And there might not be someone who's currently employed to do that instead of you.
MS: Exactly. And even if they are, they shouldn't be doing that. Their job is not picking up litter. They have important things to do, a lot of which are about making your experience better. But I think trails are carved into nature, so they require maintenance to not be overgrown, to be accessible. You might see that trails are closed that weren't able to be maintained this season. If a trail is closed, you should never go on it. Follow all signage. You have no idea what's behind what you can see.
And if everyone were to follow the leave no trace policy, you wouldn't have to worry about more litter on the trails, which I know a lot of people are talking about with the upcoming season, but we know what people are like. So I guess the most I can say is be using your reusable water bottle. Try and bring as little trash as possible, and if you see something from someone else, bring a plastic bag and be able to pick it up and put it in your backpack. I think that's the nicest thing you can do.
LA: And I think in terms of being thoughtful more broadly, probably being patient with the people that work at the visitor's center or those who are trying to direct traffic as you enter the park. If things are taking a little bit longer, it's probably because there's fewer people doing those jobs. And as with any industry under strain or really in any time, you should be patient and courteous.
MS: And I think people don't realize how much money is required to maintain these parks because it seems like it's about conservation. So you're preserving this place for our enjoyment. But there's so much maintenance required. And another way you can support the parks is, so have you seen the National Parks merch?
LA: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
MS: It's amazing. They have playing cards, they have sweatshirts, they do collaborations with different designers. All that money is going back to the park or to the park system. And so I think there's a lot of people who love the parks. Treat it like any other organization that's under stress at the moment, and definitely be patient with people working there or other guests. You're all just trying to have a nice time. It's like when you go on a plane during the holiday season. Some things might go wrong. You just need to be patient and you need to be kind to everyone around you, otherwise you're all going to have a bad experience.
LA: So basically don't be an asshole, and go shopping.
MS: Yeah. Okay. The question we've all been waiting for, what are your top three national parks?
LA: I think I've let them slip throughout the episode, or at least two of them. Acadia, like you, in Maine. I think it is a very special, beautiful place. I have some wonderful memories there. I've been there a couple of times now. I have got some terrible sunburn there last year. So always pack your sunscreen. But yeah, to me it really is the big star of the East Coast and I think really actually was part of what helped me fall in love with hiking here.
And then in terms of really memorable outdoors experiences, Bryce Canyon, which is smaller, and while it was very busy-
MS: It's very busy.
LA: ... it is still, at least from my understanding a few years ago, it still wasn't quite as busy as some of its neighbors. It also was shockingly filled with Europeans. The Europeans, the French have found Bryce Canyon.
MS: I mean, international travelers come for our National Park System.
LA: [inaudible 00:27:10]
MS: And what an amazing thing.
LA: And then Joshua Tree, which I think I've chosen three really contrasting landscapes, but driving through Joshua Tree to get to the campsite at sunset was such a beautiful and unique moment to see that sort of land. And those trees, I don't think they're anywhere else in the country. They're just there and they're so weird.
Megan, thank you so much for extolling all of your knowledge, which is very deep. And I sit next to you and you were rattling off things I didn't even know you knew.
MS: My head. I'm tired. Too much information.
LA: A lot up there. She's tapping her head. If people want to follow along with your summer travels, I don't know if you're going to any national parks, but wherever you are in the world, where can they find you?
MS: You can find me at @Spurrelly on Instagram and I will be going to some national parks and state parks.
LA: It's fair to say after all this, that visitor experiences to national parks this summer is going to be affected by potential staffing shortages. It might be harder to be spontaneous, but I don't think it will be any harder to appreciate the beauty of America's national parks. For many of us, I'm going to count myself included in this, going to a national park is still a quintessential American summer trip and one that we should treasure and experience more than ever.
Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram at @lalehannah. Our engineer is Pran Bandi, and special thanks to Jake Lummus for engineering support. Our show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. Jude Kampfner is our producer, Stephanie Kariuki, our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is head of Conde Nast Global Audio.