Frommer's National Parks of the American West - Don Laine [5]
Frommer's National Parks of the American West, 5th Edition Wiley Publishing, Inc. • 111 River St. • Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
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Other Great Guides for Your Trip:
Frommer's Zion & Bryce Canyon National Parks
Frommer's Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks
Frommer's Yosemite & Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks
Frommer's Rocky Mountain National Park
Frommer's Family Vacations in the National Parks
Frommer's Arizona
Frommer's California
Frommer's Great Outdoor Guide to Northern California
Frommer's Colorado
Frommer's Montana & Wyoming
Frommer's Utah
Frommer's American Southwest
National Parks For Dummies
Seattle & the Olympic Peninsula For Dummies
Introduction: Enjoying the Parks Without the Crowds
The National Park Service seems to be walking a tightrope. The ser-vice has two missions, and they sometimes seem to run in opposition to each other. Its first mission is to preserve some of America's most unique and important natural areas for future generations. The second is to make these places available for the enjoyment of all Americans. Because the number of visitors to our national parks has grown tremendously over the years, some of the busiest parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion, and Yellowstone, are now searching for ways to make both of these goals a reality.
Park Service officials have often said that the real source of congestion in the most heavily visited parks is not the number of people but rather the number of cars. (You don't go to a national park hoping to get caught in a traffic jam, do you?) As a result, those parks with yearly attendance in the millions are now putting together plans to limit vehicle traffic within their boundaries.
If all this leads you to despair that you can't have a true "wilderness" experience at a national park in the American West, banish the thought. Even in a park as crowded as Yosemite, there are places where you can completely escape the crowds, where you'll be able to walk among the trees and hear nothing but the sound of your own footsteps. All it takes is a little effort and planning, and that's where this book can help.
Our authors have talked to the rangers, hiked the trails, and taken the tours, all the while asking, "How can our readers avoid the crowds?" In each of the following chapters, you'll find a section giving you straightforward, practical advice on just how to do this. Sure, if you're an outdoors iron man (or woman), you can avoid the crowds by taking off on the most strenuous backcountry hikes, but not everyone is made of iron. So we've searched for secluded trails that can be hiked by the average person (not just the ones you'll see on the covers of Outside magazine), scenic drives where you won't get caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and points where, with only minimum effort, you'll be afforded spectacular views without feeling as if you're packed into Times Square on New Year's Eve.
We've also discovered that when you go is as important