Combining America’s wide open highways, charming towns and spectacular landscapes, the American national park road trip is arguably the country’s quintessential vacation. These are the greatest U.S. national park road trips, from the Appalachians to the Pacific Northwest and Southern California.
On a road trip to the national parks and monuments of Arizona, you’ll get to explore spectacular desert landscapes, visit ancient Native American sites and ruins, drive a part of iconic Route 66 and see the majestic Grand Canyon.
One of the world’s greatest road trips, the drive from Jackson Hole to Kalispell takes you to three spectacular national parks. See the majestic Teton Range, Yellowstone’s geysers and the glacial valleys of Glacier National Park on an unforgettable northern Rockies national parks road trip.
One of America’s most diverse regions, the Pacific Northwest (PNW) is home to massive volcanoes, pristine temperate rain forests, high desert plains, sea stack-lined coasts and spectacular mountain ranges. In this post, I talk about the many must-visit Pacific Northwest national parks and offer a couple of suggested road trip itineraries.
On a scenic road trip from Seattle to Sacramento, you can see, explore—and even climb—more than a dozen mighty Cascade Range Volcanoes in nine separate parks, from Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens to Mount Hood, Newberry Volcano, Crater Lake and Lassen Peak.
Many scenic highways and byways crisscross the American West, linking some of the world’s greatest national parks. A classic example of a road trip state is Utah, home to five spectacular national parks. Lined up across the southern part of the state, this quintet of Utah national parks is known as the “Mighty 5.”
In its heyday, Historic Route 66 was the most popular road to the west, both for traveling families and migrants, and it still is to some extent. “America’s Main Street”, as it’s often called, still brings road trippers to many of the best national parks in the Midwest, Southwest and California.
I might kick in an open door with this, but California is much more than sandy beaches, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, and tech start-ups. The third-largest state in America, after Alaska and Texas, California is incredibly, exceptionally diverse.