10 Best National Parks for 1-Day Visits

Examining the 10 National Parks that are best suited for a 1-day visit. Many people are on road trips and want to be able to see as much as possible in a limited amount of time. In this video I discuss the best National Parks for maximizing limited time.

[stephencrabtree]

Great list. I’d also add my personal favorite: Crater Lake. Also worth one-day visits: Acadia, Saguaro, and Wind Cave, and Carlsbad Caverns

[marir]

National parks mentioned in the order they are presented.
1. Bryce Canyon 0:37
2. Arches National Park 1:51
3. Yellowstone 3:50
4. Grand Teton 5:40
5. Theodore Roosevelt 7:18
6. Badlands 8:48
7. Redwood 10:21
8. Sequoia 12:08
9. Mammoth Cave 13:35
10. Congaree 15:10

[ndgirllone]

Thank you for mentioning Theodore Roosevelt National Park. So wildly beautiful and incredibly unique, there really isn't any other place like it. Theodore Roosevelt spent time on his ranch here in the south unit for respite after the deaths of his wife and mother. History buffs will enjoy this tremendously, and as you mentioned, there are rarely crowds. I've been to the North Unit several times and the bison always outnumber the people. I didn't think I could love your channel any more, but you've done it.

[windsongshf]

Just got back from visiting family in Redding, Ca. and took a day trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park! Excellent one day adventure!

[Still-Sitting]

Glad you made this. I’m recently disabled and road trips to national parks are my new goal. Road trips everywhere, actually. Definitely gonna be a challenge with a wheelchair, but I’m all for being a victim of circumstance. Great video, cheers ✌️

[steve]

Another great video. I thought for sure that Capitol Reef National Park in Utah would have been on this list though I believe it is considered Utah's fifth and forgotten national park.

[polonium]

Other national parks that are "doable" in one day: (1) Guadalupe Mountains, Culberson County. TX; (2) Carlsbad Caverns, Eddy County, NM; (3) Everglades, southern Florida. I highly recommend Guadalupe and Carlsbad. Guadalupe will wear you out if you hike to El Capitan, the highest point in Texas, but you will not forget the scenery once you get there. Carlsbad is an easy and worthwhile walk through the massive caverns, which have been tied in with a much larger karst system in southeastern New Mexico. You can drive through the Big Bend National Park (Brewster Country, TX) in a day, but you can't begin to appreciate the complex geology and cultural history of the park and surrounding area without spending a least a week or more there.

[johnsullivan]

Thanks for your opinions on National parks. My wife was pregnant when we visited Bryce and we loved it so much we named our daughter Bryce. One park that is always overlooked is by people not in the Northeast is Acadia. It's the only national park in the East and definitely worth a visit. It has small mountains that are right on the ocean, so the scenery is beautiful. It also has miles of carriage trails that were designed by John Rockefeller to allow horse carriages to access the best views. They are great for biking as cars can not use them. It's a great place for outdoor activities or just driving the park road that runs through its interior.

[habeebmohammad]

Love your videos, so informative. Please make more.

[kriskjellquist]

Arriving early and going mid-week is absolutely key to almost any NP. I visited Joshua Tree and North Rim of Grand Canyon recently with zero crowds and literally drove right in to both with no wait at all. Both are absolutely stunning and easily enjoyed in a day.

[WonderWhatHappened]

The synchronizing lightning bugs at Congaree National Park are amazing. This occurs a couple of weeks a year.

[shellyharry]

Congaree is awesome! I live in the Columbia area and visit Congaree often... FYI, there's no fee to access the Park!

[martinjdesmond]

Nice summary of 10 national parks to visit in one day. I agree with a couple of the other comments about Yellowstone. We typically spend 5 to 6 days when we visit Yellowstone which I don't think is even enough time to appreciate the wonder of that park.

[PeakBagger]

Good list and I would add several more ... Acadia, Shenandoah, Wind Cave, Carlsbad Caverns, Great Sand Dunes, Petrified Forest and Saguaro (also adding the newly created White Sands National Park- formerly National Monument).

[benipedia]

It was a busy day, but In ONE DAY at yellowstone I saw:
Four Waterfalls. 2 of which being S tier (Yellowstone Falls and Union Falls)
A bison
A coyote.
Old Faithful
Grand Prismatic spring
And climbed a mountain.

I ended the day feeling like I'd seen a year of beauty in a day. STRONG recommend of Yellowstone for literally ANY amount of days.

[shellyharry]

My husband and I did Yellowstone and Grand Teton and spent a week. Just fyi, dogs aren't allowed on the hiking trails in either park. We knew this prior to the trip, so we kenneled our labrador.

[gullscomic]

Personally, I thought Carlsbad Caverns were better than the Mammoth Caves. Both are amazing, but Carlsbad just had a lot of amazing, varied formations in a tight-knit area. Redwoods and Congaree, I totally agree are perfect one day parks. For the longest time I was so against having a man-made structure being a National Park. That is, until we went to Dry Tortugas. This is an amazing park! It's so small, that you've really seen it all in a couple hours. You can camp there, but this park is basically a mandatory half day park with the boat schedule. Dry Tortugas is one of my favorite parks. Granted, it may be the most "out of the way" park in the lower 48 and you have to book the boat ride in advance, which is kinda spendy. But it's worth it!

[seangawne]

Great video. I've shared some "useful" tips of my own here.
The best way to visit Yosemite or Grand Canyon is to wait for a big bad storm, then go immediately after the storm before the tourist buses show up. With Yosemite, sometimes a really bad rain will take out most of the bridges, and that's when you can luck out and find the park nearly empty. Seriously, I've done this multiple times, but of course it only works if you live close enough to be able to drive to one of these parks with only a day's notice.
Once when I took my family to Yellowstone they were doing a major road construction project, and had torn up all of the paved roads on the eastern side. This severely limited park access, to the point that there would be less than 50 people in the crowd when Old Faithful would erupt. That was the first time we visited Yellowstone and it kind of spoiled me, we stayed for several days but the next time we visited about ten years later I was shocked by the massive crowds and traffic jams. So if you want to visit Yellowstone without crowds, try and go when they are doing major road construction, which makes it awful to drive around but pretty nice to visit.

[rogernuffer]

It looks like you took most of your own photos for this video. If that's the case I'm pretty impressed with your ability to get such high quality photos when you're just in a park and moving through it and can't really control the fact that you're not there just for sunrise or sunset but have to take pictures even in the middle of the day and still get good images. So my hats off to you and your photographic abilities.

[blonnberg]

Great video! I would add Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP in Colorado. Beautiful canyon, lightly visited 👍