I'm planning a road trip that will include many of the national parks. Are there any I should be spending more (or less) time in?
I'll include some background at the bottom of the post, but for now I'll get straight to the point. I've done a lot of research on what hikes I want to take and what other activities (rafting, kayaking) I'm interested in doing, but nothing quite compares to visiting the parks themselves. So with that in mind, do any of these parks deserve more (or less) time than I've planned for them?
NOTES: Parks I've already been to have an asterisk. They're sorted by the order I'll be visiting them. A "full day" means I'll be waking up there and spending the night there (no traveling outside the park).
- Saguaro: 1-2 days
- Carlsbad Caverns: 1 full day
- Guadalupe Mountains: 2 full days
- Big Bend: 5 full days
- Everglades: 2 full days
- Biscayne: 1 full day
- Dry Tortugas: 1 full day
- Congaree:1-2 days
- Great Smoky Mountains: 4 full days
- Mammoth Caves: 1-2 days
- Hot Springs: Half day
- Petrified Forest: 1-2 days
- Grand Canyon*: 2 full days
- Sequoia*: 2 full days
- King's Canyon*:1-2 days
- Yosemite*: 4-5 days
- Redwoods*: 1 full day
- Lassen Volcanic*: 3 full days
- Crater Lake: 1 full day
- Mount Rainier: 4 full days
- Olympic: 3 full days
- North Cascades: 3 full days
- Jasper: 2-3 days
- Banff: 2-3 days
- Glacier: 3 full days
- Yellowstone*: 3 full days
- Grand Tetons*: 1-2 days
- Mesa Verde: 1 full day
- Black Canyon of the Gunnison: 1-2 days
- Great Sand Dunes: 1-2 days
- Rocky Mountain*: 3 full days
- Shenandoah: 3-4 days
- Acadia: 3 full days
- Cuyahoga Valley: 1 full day
- Isle Royale: 3-5 days
- Voyageurs: 3 full days
- Theodore Roosevelt: 2 full days
- Badlands: 1 full day
- Wind Caves: 1 full day
- Great Basin: 2 full days
- Death Valley*: 1 full day
You may have noticed I'm missing a few. I'm taking a separate road trip to the Utah parks (Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches) a year earlier as a sort of warm up for this trip. I'm also taking a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon next year, so I've basically just included it in this list to hike to Havasu Falls.
Background
In five years, I'm planning to take nine months to road trip around the United States (with stops in Canada) in an RV. I'll be focusing on visiting national parks and attending baseball games at every stadium in the MLB. I'll be starting near Los Angeles and tackling the trip in two parts: the southern United States (to Florida and back), and then the rest of it.
Right now I'm in the researching phase, just figuring out how much time I should devote to each destination and how much money I'll need to save to pull this off. I'll probably make follow-up posts for opinions on the other parts of the trip (recommendations for each city on the itinerary, interesting places to stop during drives, etc.). I do have a custom google map for the trip that I'm planning to share here eventually.
Sorry this post got so long, but I would appreciate your input if you think I'm not giving an appropriate amount of time to any of these parks. Thank you!
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