Are you already tired of winter?
The short days, the cold, and the snow have a lot of people longing for spring. While we can’t make spring arrive faster, we can recommend some great national parks to visit in spring.
Let’s start planning your perfect Spring Break getaway!
Grand Canyon, Arizona
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The Grand Canyon is open all year, but the best times for descending into the canyon are spring and fall. Temperatures typically are still bearable during those times, which can be life-saving considering it’s often 20 degrees warmer at the bottom of the canyon than it is on the rim. In winter, the steep trails can be icy.
Shenandoah, Virginia
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With snow melted away, streams and waterfalls are at their peak flows. Forests and fields burst with color as wildflowers bloom. Temperatures are pleasant while humidity is mostly relatively low.
Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina and Tennessee
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The Smokies are a lot like Shenandoah, only the mountains and streams are bigger. Views are typically better than they are in summer, when a thick haze often envelops the mountains.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado
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In the summer, the sands here can get scorchingly hot. Spring is also visually spectacular because there’s still heavy snow cover on the majestic Sangre De Cristo Mountains that tower above the dunes.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado
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Like the Grand Canyon, the “Black” is accessible all year, so if you just want to see it, any season is good. But spring is one of the best times to take one of the extremely steep, rugged trails down to the river at the bottom of this deep, narrow canyon. Summer can get unpleasantly hot.
Crater Lake, Oregon
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The roads are still closed and many trails are still buried beneath snow, so why come here in the spring? To start with, the peaks around the rim are still covered in snow, making a beautiful visual effect. Since the road around the lake is still closed, you can walk it to your heart’s content. And the summer crowds are nowhere to be seen.
Arches, Utah
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The summer heat and lack of shade in Arches makes summer a tough time to visit, even a dangerous one. Spring has much milder temperatures; in fact, early spring can still be quite cold here.
Zion, Utah
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Zion has a lot more shade than Arches does, so a lot of the hikes are still nice in the summer, but summer is also the busiest season. Visiting in the spring won’t guarantee solitude by any means, but it is a little quieter and less crowded, and the weather is great.
Yosemite, California
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The road over Tioga Pass and into the high country doesn’t open until summer, but conditions in world-famous Yosemite Valley are pretty close to perfect with warm days and cool, clear nights. The waterfalls are also at their highest volume of the year due to all the snowmelt feeding them.
Death Valley, California
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Death Valley is the hottest place on earth, and it’s dangerously hot in the summer, when deaths from heat exhaustion and heatstroke aren’t uncommon. Early spring is an excellent time to visit because it will be warm and sunny, and the trails don’t feel like furnaces.
Big Bend, Texas
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Spring is a great time to visit the lower areas of this park such as the canyons along the Rio Grande. Temperatures are warm to cool in the mountainous areas, making for pleasant hiking. Summer is tolerable higher up, but thunderstorms are frequent.
White Sands, New Mexico
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The striking white gypsum dunes here can get painfully hot here in summer, and people have died from heat-related issues even though there aren’t any long trails here. Something that’s true no matter what season you visit is that you need eye protection; the glare on a sunny day can cause temporary blindness or long-term eye damage.
The 30 Most Beautiful Places in the World That Everyone Must See
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There’s no way you could ever come up with a definitive list of the world’s most beautiful places. However, if you ask around, some places come up a lot more frequently than others do.
The following are some of the places that people mention over and over again, not in any particular order.
30 Breathtaking Places You Must See Before You Die
The Two Best Scenic Wonders in Each of the Mountain States
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The Mountain States– Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico– have some of the wildest and most rugged landscapes in the United States. Because they’re so big, it can take a lot of time to visit them, so it helps to be able to plan for some specific destinations.
Following are our choices for the top two must-see outdoor locations in each of these seven states.
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