How We Plan an Economical Family Vacation in National Parks
It’s never too early to start thinking about your travels, especially if you want to enjoy the beauty of the world on a good, tidy budget. One of the best ways to do this is to camp and at the same time take advantage of one of the best deals on offer to American citizens, our national park system.
This post was originally published on The Simple Dollar .
The US National Parks contain an almost endless array of natural beauties, from Denali’s northern landscapes to magnificent glacier views, from the stunning Acadia forests to the incredible Yellowstone hot springs. Yosemite. The Grand Canyon. Joshua tree. Shenandoah. I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, there is more stunning beauty to be found in our national parks than you can explore in a lifetime .
Even more amazing is the fact that you can see all this beauty on a very tight budget. Holidays around a national park can actually be very inexpensive!
Plan your way forward
One of the biggest savings opportunities in a national park is that you can camp instead of staying at a hotel. This step alone can save hundreds and hundreds of dollars over several days of vacation.
The problem here is that many campgrounds in and around national parks tend to fill up months in advance, especially in the most popular parks in the national park system like Yellowstone. You can usually find a campsite somewhere within reasonable limits near a national park even close to your trip, but you will probably camp a considerable distance from the park (which means long trips to and from the park) or shoot for camping on a first come, first served basis (which means you have to be lucky to get a place to camp).
The best way is to just start planning now and reserve your campsite as early as possible. The tools for finding such a campground are listed below, but the main thing to remember is to start planning ahead right now.
If you have a fourth grader, do for free
The National Park Service currently offers the Every Kid in the Park program , which gives every fourth grader in the United States a free annual National Park Pass for their family. This means you don’t even have to pay an entrance fee to visit those national parks that require a visit, further reducing the cost of a national park holiday.
The registration process for this free pass is very simple. Your fourth grader can do this on his own and learns about the national park system in the process.
For us, the occasion that our fourth grader gets a pass to the national parks means that we are planning a vacation that is centered in Yellowstone, but in fact includes stops in other national parks for a day or two. Since the pass is valid for all national parks, this is a great time to plan a trip to several national parks for a few days.
Do it at your own pace.
The idea of visiting several parks over the course of a few days brings me to my next point. A trip to national parks is a self-guided trip, which means you can do things at your own pace, without having to carefully plan your days or make appointments.
Most of the trails and majestic sights that you are going to see in the national park will be there tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. You don’t need to plan anything. You don’t have to rush to hush up everything in one or two days. You can do whatever you want at your own pace.
In addition, our national parks offer opportunities for all levels of physical activity. Most parks have amazing attractions that require little or no walking, and most parks have trails and hiking trails of a huge variety in varying lengths and varying difficulty. Some of these are mostly walks on a raised boardwalk half a mile through beautiful forest, while others may involve thousands of hikes in hilly terrain – and we’re not even talking hikes in the hinterland. You can find something that suits your fitness level and hiking desire perfectly, and you can distribute different walks and hikes throughout the trip. You can even see many beautiful sights from your car window if you like.
Drive
A trip to a national park is a great way to save money on travel versus flying, especially if you are traveling with the whole family. Driving allows you to pack your camping gear with you instead of sending it in the mail or in your airport baggage. It also significantly increases freedom of movement and allows for stops and side trips along the way.
For example, on our upcoming trip to Yellowstone, we plan to spend most of two days in Badlands National Park en route to Yellowstone from Iowa, and then spend the day at Devil’s Tower National Monument . If we so wish, we can also stop at Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park along the way (everyone except Custer is free thanks to our free pass, as described above). If we flew on this trip, we would have missed it all.
Use the library as a great planning resource
Your local library probably has a travel department that has a ton of books about any national park or part of the country you might want to visit. Even if they do not have a book about your specific destination, it is highly likely that a librarian will be able to purchase one for you through interlibrary loan.
I believe the travel guide is still the best tool for planning a vacation simply because it takes the pieces of information that are scattered all over the Internet and puts them in one volume where you can find everything you need.
I usually check several travel guides during the planning stages of a vacation, for example when we are figuring out which campsites we are going to use, where we are going to stay, and what trails and attractions we might want to see. … While I don’t usually mark things down that far in advance, I usually reserve campsites based on the recommendations of the guidebook as early as possible, and also make lists of recommended hikes and recommended attractions in the national park.
If possible, I will often check these guides again closer to our trip and take them with me. This can sometimes be “lucky or missed” depending on other travelers, as sometimes others check such travel guides during the summer months.
Eat simple … but tasty
When it comes to traveling to a national park, one of the biggest ways to save money is through food. Instead of eating in restaurants all the time, as is often the case on vacation, the entire trip is much more conducive to eating simple meals at your campsite.
While I tend to cook interesting dishes in the Dutch fire oven, you can cook many different, delicious and simple dishes without any tools. For example, this article from Country Living offers a ton of simple recipe ideas that work well for camping, and that go far beyond just making sandwiches for every meal (although sandwiches should be a staple – a simple sandwich is practically camping-friendly).
This is another reason why a trip to the national park is beneficial. It allows you to take a cooler with you, which you can use to cool items, and also gives you a safe place to store food away from the wild at night. It also makes grocery shopping easier as you can just go to a grocery store near the national park and fill the back of your car with food you might want to have on your trip.
Strategize your camping gear
The biggest amount people carry on a hike is the cost of equipment. You will need at least some kind of shelter, which means that you will need either a tent or some other shelter (which is likely to be much more expensive).
But here’s the thing: if you regularly camp and make camping a part of your family’s activities (especially in the summer), the cost of a family tent, sleeping bags, and other supplies per trip is significantly reduced. Let’s say you invest $ 100 in a simple family tent and then buy a few sleeping bags, say, $ 25 each. That’s $ 200 in gear – expensive, isn’t it? Well, take into account the fact that you can use this equipment on more than 20 hikes. This means your travel cost for this gear is $ 10 per ride. This is quickly getting very cheap. (There’s also the fact that you can use sleeping bags at home for various things like sleepovers and winter blankets on the coldest nights.)
Another thing to note about camping gear is that many people overdo it with what they need. Inexperience, they buy whatever they think they need and then find they don’t need much of it. If you are going to have a typical family camping trip, all you need is a tent to comfortably accommodate your family, sleeping bags (and that is even kind of like, since you can use blankets), something, what you can make a fire with. and a flashlight or two (which you probably already have). Additional gear is not needed until you understand why you need it, so just do it slowly and sparingly.
Final thoughts
If I include the prorated cost of our camping gear and all driving, food, campground fees, and everything else, our family’s summer vacation in the national park will cost us substantially less than $ 100 a day. There is practically no vacation that is cheaper than this one. Not only that, the trip offers us a unique opportunity to see the beauty of nature that our country has to offer.
I think this is an incredible deal, but part of that deal is that we started planning in the fall before going. If such a trip seems intriguing to you, I recommend that you start planning now.
How we plan an economical family vacation in national parks | Simple dollar