National Park Road Trips
The Ultimate National Park Road Trip
One loop connects every national park in the contiguous United States — 47 of them, from the Florida Keys to the Olympic coast. Driven in the right order, it's a single continuous route, not 47 separate trips.
Why this loop
Why these parks, in this order
Visiting all 47 sounds like a lifetime project. It isn't — if you drive them in the right order.
Data scientist Randal Olson mapped the shortest possible route that connects every one, and that's the loop this guide follows. It's a loop, not a line: there's no official start or finish, so you can join it at whichever park is closest to home and drive in either direction back to where you began.
The order is what makes it work. Each leg below is a tight group of parks you can drive between in a day or two, and the legs chain together so you're always moving forward around the country instead of doubling back across it.
Before you commit
What the full loop actually takes
Driven end to end at a fast pace, the loop is about two months of near-constant driving. That's the honest number, and it's why almost nobody does the whole circuit at once.
The loop suits some travelers better than others. If you're retired, working remotely, traveling by RV or van, or stringing together a long sabbatical, the full route is realistic. If you have two weeks, pick one leg and do it properly rather than rushing the whole country.
- About two months end to end at a fast pace — plan one or two legs per trip if your time is shorter.
- Four parks need a boat or seaplane: Dry Tortugas, Biscayne, Isle Royale, and Channel Islands. Book those crossings well ahead.
- Isle Royale closes from November to mid-April — fit it into a summer leg.
- The northern parks — Glacier, the North Cascades, Yellowstone's high country — are summer-only; their high roads don't open until the snow clears.
- Big Bend and Death Valley are remote and hot. Go in spring or fall, and fill the tank before you arrive.
The route
The loop, leg by leg
The order below is the loop in driving sequence. Each park links to its full Atlas trip guide where one is built; the rest are on the way.
The Southwest
Three Arizona parks sit within a day's drive of each other, which makes the desert Southwest the easiest place to begin — and the Grand Canyon is the anchor most people plan the whole trip around.
- 1 Grand Canyon AZ
- 2 Petrified Forest AZ
- 3 Saguaro AZ
West Texas & Southern New Mexico
Two of these share a mountain range across the Texas–New Mexico line. Big Bend is the long detour south to the Rio Grande — remote, and worth the fuel.
- 4 Guadalupe Mountains TX
- 5 Carlsbad Caverns NM
- 6 Big Bend TX Remote far-West Texas — the nearest fuel and supplies can be an hour out.
The Mid-South
The route turns east across the South, picking up two cave-and-spring parks and the most-visited park in the country before the run down to Florida.
- 7 Hot Springs AR
- 8 Mammoth Cave KY
- 9 Great Smoky Mountains TN
Florida
The Florida parks are a peninsula dead-end, so you do them as an out-and-back. Two of the three are mostly water.
- 10 Everglades FL
- 11 Dry Tortugas FL Ferry or seaplane only, from Key West — book well ahead.
- 12 Biscayne FL Almost entirely water; a boat tour is the way in.
The Atlantic Seaboard
Back up the Eastern Seaboard the parks thin out and spread apart. Acadia, on the Maine coast, is the northeastern turn before the route heads west.
- 13 Congaree SC
- 14 Shenandoah VA
- 15 Acadia ME
The Great Lakes & North Woods
Across the top of the Midwest, two of these are remote north-woods parks on the Canadian border. Isle Royale is an island in Lake Superior.
- 16 Cuyahoga Valley OH
- 17 Isle Royale MI Ferry or seaplane only, and closed November to mid-April.
- 18 Voyageurs MN
The Northern Plains
The badlands and the Black Hills make a tight three-park run before the climb into the Rockies.
- 19 Theodore Roosevelt ND
- 20 Badlands SD
- 21 Wind Cave SD
Colorado
Colorado packs four parks into one state — alpine peaks, the tallest dunes in North America, a sheer canyon, and ancient cliff dwellings, each a different landscape.
- 22
- 23 Great Sand Dunes CO
- 24 Black Canyon of the Gunnison CO
- 25 Mesa Verde CO
Utah's Mighty 5
Utah's five parks are close enough to drive in a week, which is exactly why we've built the day-by-day version as its own field-tested guide.
- 26 Canyonlands UT
- 27 Arches UT
- 28 Capitol Reef UT
- 29 Bryce Canyon UT
- 30 Zion UT
The Great Basin & Greater Yellowstone
Cross the Great Basin to the Tetons and Yellowstone — the busiest stretch of the whole loop, and the one to reserve earliest.
- 31 Great Basin NV
- 32 Grand Teton WY
- 33 Yellowstone WY
The Northern Rockies & Cascades
The northern tier is summer-only country: Glacier's high road and the Cascade passes don't open until the snow clears, usually not before late June.
- 34 Glacier MT The Going-to-the-Sun Road opens only in summer once plows clear the pass.
- 35 North Cascades WA
- 36
- 37 Olympic WA
The Pacific Coast & Volcanoes
Down the Pacific side the route trades alpine for volcano and old-growth — a caldera lake, the tallest trees on earth, and a still-active volcanic park.
- 38 Crater Lake OR
- 39 Redwood CA
- 40 Lassen Volcanic CA
The Sierra Nevada
California's Sierra parks stack up the center of the state. Yosemite anchors them, with Kings Canyon and Sequoia just south and Pinnacles out toward the coast.
- 41 Yosemite CA
- 42 Kings Canyon CA
- 43 Sequoia CA
- 44 Pinnacles CA
Southern California
The last leg drops into Southern California and closes the loop back toward the Grand Canyon — desert again, where you started.
- 45 Channel Islands CA Boat only, from Ventura or Oxnard.
- 46 Joshua Tree CA
- 47 Death Valley CA Summer heat is extreme — spring and fall are the windows.
Make it real
Pick your leg and start planning
You don't have to drive all 47 at once, and you shouldn't try. Pick the leg that fits the time you have — the Mighty 5 across Utah, the Colorado four, the Washington three — and plan that stretch properly.
Every park above links to its full Atlas trip guide as we build it out. For the legs that are ready, the field-tested guides give you the day-by-day: where to stay, which hikes to prioritize, when to book permits, and the contingency plan for when a road or a trailhead is full.
One pass, every park
One pass covers every national park on this route.
The America the Beautiful annual pass covers entry to every park on this loop. On a trip that strings together this many parks, it pays for itself long before you finish the first leg.
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