We lit out for Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks in Utah, hoping to see them both in a day, but without knowing much about either one. What we did know by this point on our trip was that we would not see too many other tourists in either place – a benefit of visiting national parks in the off-season.
Ethan frames a shot in Zion National Park.
If you’re lucky enough to be in the position to take a road trip in late fall/early winter (at the same time as gas prices tank nationwide) you too could enjoy the luxury of visiting our nation’s parks in near-solitude. In Glacier NP in Montana, we found ourselves alone save for three other cars, then in California’s Yosemite, our car was among only a few dozen.
There, we stood in an empty parking lot at one of the most photographed vistas in the world (see below), chuckling as we read a posted notice about how long it can take in the summer to find parking here and get a place between shoulders to snap this shot of El Capitan, Half Dome and Bridalveil Falls:
Here’s a shot I took towards dusk in Bryce Canyon, to drive home my point… Can you imagine this place in late July?! (The park gets 1.5M visitors each year.)
My Jetta at an empty vista in Bryce Canyon.
But in early December there was no jostling for a position to take pictures, no tourist traffic jams, no obnoxious people shattering the near-perfect silence with their shouting or giggling… On our way through Bryce we saw maybe three other cars.
Looking out over the mysterious hoodoos of Bryce Canyon.
In nearly all of the 13 national parks we visited, it was just us and mother nature…
Sunset over Bryce canyon, taken from Rainbow Point, about 15 miles into the park:
Take Mesa Verde National Park for another example, where we were able to walk amongst the ruins of 1,400 year old cliff dwellings with a small group of only ten other visitors.
A tourist-free shot of cliff dwellings built by ancestral puebloans 1,400 years ago at what is now Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado.
I’ve heard from friends who saw this place in groups of 75 that a visit during the busy season is a much, much different experience. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like people, but rather, I found it comforting to know that there are still places one can go in this country and feel alone with nature. It’s also a relief that these same places exist for everyone to see.
Two years ago, when I visited Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, I remember being unpleasantly surprised by the large number of tourists I saw. My friend and tour guide Becca Hanson reminded me of the words etched into the park’s arched stone entrance:
She said it’s a good thing people visit our national parks instead of their local paved paradise. Who knows, she added, maybe that kid standing over there by the bison statue is a future wildlife biologist…
Yellowstone, like some of the other most popular parks, is full of reminders of the fact that these places are outfitted to accommodate many millions of annual visitors (bathrooms by the dozen, weather shelters, picnic sites, dumpster clusters, info plaques explaining complicated geological processes in lay terms) and I felt lucky every time we found ourselves nearly or completely alone.
Next stop: New Mexico
