Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award.
National Parks are some of the most beautiful and popular destinations in the United States. They’re also vast expanses of largely undeveloped wilderness. To make the most of your next national park adventure, you’ll want a good guide.
This full-color travel guidebook is the ultimate tool to simplify your travel planning. Detailed maps highlighting popular attractions and trailheads help visualize your itinerary. Lodging, camping, and hiking tables make choosing where to stay and what trails to hike easy. Hiking is explored in depth, but you’ll find details, including outfitter essentials, on all the most popular activities. Whether you’re looking to raft the Grand Canyon, see Old Faithful erupt, climb Mount Rainier, or simply select the perfect place to lay back and stare at the stars, you’ll find those details too. Tips and recommendations from the author help you decide when to visit and how to avoid crowds. Hundreds of lists put the best of America’s Best Idea at your fingertips. A dozen suggested road trips, including hundreds of noteworthy stops beyond the parks, provide the building blocks for a trip of a lifetime.
The completely updated third edition features more than 150 large maps and 100 easy-to-read tables. 550 new photos showcase our most scenic treasures before you set foot in them. When you do, you’ll want to maximize time on your next national park adventure by planning it with the help of a good guide. Let this book be Your Guide to the National Parks.
From the Publisher
A Guide for Every Visitor
Family Vacations
From Acadia to Zion, you’ll find everything needed to plan your next family vacation. This guide helps you navigate park roadways. And when you’re ready to leave them behind, trails are broken down by region and difficulty so you can pick the perfect one.
Couples Holidays
Whether your idea of a rejuvenating couples holiday is a long weekend relaxing at Virgin Islands’ Trunk Bay (above) or a few peaceful nights backpacking in the Rocky Mountains, you’ll find it in our National Parks, and this guide will help you make that holiday count.
Thrill-seeker Escapes
You’ll find information on all the great National Park Adventures: rafting the Grand Canyon, driving Canyonlands’ White Rim Road, Climbing Mount Whitney, hiking to the top of Yosemite’s Half Dome (above), and probably a few you don’t know about (yet).
A Guide for Every Interest
Land Adventures
Hiking is discussed in detail but it’s far from the only terrestrial adventure in our National Parks. From mountain biking Denali Park Road (above) to horseback riding at Grand Teton, the parks offer a seemingly unlimited supply of land-based excursions.
Water Adventures
Want to paddle among active glaciers at Glacier Bay, Kenai Fjords, or Wrangell–St. Elias? Or maybe ride the rolling rapids of New River Gorge (above)? Placid alpine lakes? A maze of mangrove forests? The parks have it all. Pack your yak and plan your next paddle adventure.
Air Adventures
National Park adventures extend beyond earth’s surface. You can fly high above the Grand Canyon, Gateway Arch, or Acadia’s rocky islands. And then there’s Alaska, where most remote adventures are bush plane-powered (just remember to check for stowaways!).
A Guide with Every Detail
Logistical Details Galore
This book has all the details. Park basics and Transportation. Camping and Lodging. Visitor Centers and Ranger Programs (like cave tours!). Wildlife. Pets and Accessibility. The Weather. It’s all in there.
Large, Legible Maps
For maps bigger is better. This guide uses all its larger trim size to provide readers with the best map-reading experience possible. You’ll find park maps, detail maps, and region maps.
Tips and Recommendations
The author concludes each section with a series of helpful suggestions about when to visit, how to escape the crowds, things to make sure you do, others to skip, even a few beyond the park.
Publisher : Stone Road Press
Publication date : May 3, 2022
Edition : 3rd
Language : English
Print length : 724 pages
ISBN-10 : 1621280764
ISBN-13 : 978-1621280767
Item Weight : 2.64 pounds
Dimensions : 7.25 x 1.25 x 8.75 inches
KJ –
Great resource when planing trips to the national parks
Bought this book on the recommendation of another traveler. Glad that we did. We plan to take some trips that will allow us to visit more than one national park at a time, and this book has all the basic info on each park in one place.!Good size and weight to pack and take with and filled with a lot of helpful information.
Beverly Rogers –
Not one of my favorites
This was. gift and was told they enjoyed
Rexy2 –
Excellent book on the US national parks!
This book is an essential guide to the US National Parks. I use this book all the time to plan my hikes. This is the best book on the US National Parks that I have read.
Scott Scovel –
OUTSTANDING BOOK
OUTSTANDING BOOK – I’ve used it to plan and enjoy trips to over 20 National Parks. The best guide book which I have ever had – expert and practical advice from hiking trails to lodging to best sites.
James Pernikoff –
An excellent concept with a serious flaw (paperback edition)
This book has a fantastic amount of info on all our National Parks and, in my opinion, is essential if you plan to visit any one of them.But there is one serious flaw in the paperback edition that takes some of the joy out of using the book. That is the total lack of white space in the “gutter” between the two halves of each map. Many maps have critical info that is completely unreadable because it is buried in the “gutter”, and in some places it is very important info. For instance, the summit of Mt. Rainier is nearly completely invisible because it is buried in the “gutter”. If the author and publisher do a later edition of the guide, I hope they are wise enough to leave at least 1/4 inch of white space between the inner edge of each half of each map and the “gutter”. If you don’t mind the much higher price, the spiralbound edition probably avoids this problem.I hope the publishers see fit to do a similar guide to other NPS properties, especially those with “park” in their name like National Historical Parks and National Military Parks.
Consumer –
The best National Parks guide there is
I hike a lot. Iâve hiked in 37 of the 63 official National Parks, and Iâve used this book (or one of its earlier editions) on every one of those trips. It has great maps, and overviews of the park, as well as very helpful charts of the trails, rated for difficulty, with length and description of each one. This is as good a book of its kind that Iâve seen. That said, I donât take it with me (too heavy), but I do bring printouts of the maps. Important tip though: no book or map will take the place of a good satellite-based hiking app (my rec is Hiking Project) to guarantee you wonât get lost.
shayla baker –
Organized & Informative
My favorite part about this book, is that the author grouped everything into categories & location, etc. I had a list of adventures/sights I wanted to see in Death Valley & Joshua Tree, but only a couple days in each park during a last minute trip. I was able to compare my wish list to the regions the author broke down into sections, then cross referenced that to the camping, hiking, etc that was also listed by region. In addition to those lists & suggestions by category, there are also sections for backpacking, off-roading, biking, flora & fauna, pets, sunrise/sunset views, etc. Hikes are broken down not only by region, but also by difficulty as well as what time of day to do the activities based on season. There are tips of where to get gas, water, what to do if youâre just passing through & have limited time⦠The maps are more detailed than the parks are reflected in my road atlas, so was easy to advance plan routes into each park since cell service is spotty. The only additions I would love to see would be spiral bound for ease of use on the road &/or space in the binding where the maps across 2 pages meet & you lose a smidge of detail in the spine (Iâve included a photo example). Nothing that warrants removing a star from my review though!
Suzanne G. –
Great guide to the National Parks
This is a wonderful reference book for the National Parks. There is a lot of information packed into this book.
Louis G. –
Ce guide est tellement complet avec de TB informations sur non seulement le parc mais aussi tout ce qui l’entoure. TB achat
Ryan Woodrow –
Must have for anyone interested in visiting the national parks of the USA