Visiting National Parks with Young Kids

Yosemite was our first national park trip with kids, a three-and-a-half hour drive from our home in San Francisco. Our kids were five-months-old, and we were excited about hiking there with them in front carriers.

Hiking in Joshua Tree

Our most important discovery, however, was made in the Yosemite Gift Shop rather than the trail -- the Passport to Your National Parks spiral bound guide book. It listed all the parks and monuments in the U.S. national park system with spaces for official stickers and cancellation stamps from each park. We purchased one book for each child and made a goal of visiting as many national parks as possible.


Our next national park excursion required a plane ride to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Aside from the panic upon arrival when we found out our sleep-deprived brains had screwed up our hotel reservation, we all had a wonderful time. We followed up with trips to Lassen, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, Olympic, and Everglades National Parks. For the most part, our visits were wonderful encounters with nature combined with quality family time. We were sure we had hit upon the perfect formula for idyllic family vacations!

Beach Hiking in Olympic

Children, however, grow and change. What worked well when our kids were babies and toddlers most certainly did not when they became confident walkers and runners. This became clear on a trip to Mount Ranier National Park in Washington. Although they had loved being ported about in a front carrier as babies and a back carrier as toddlers, our three-year-old confident walkers wanted to get around on their own. They felt like prisoners in the backpacks and kept asking to go to the playground. We thus decided to head to the Portland Zoo instead of continuing on to Mount St. Helens National Park as planned.

It was clearly disappointing to find out we couldn't hike with our kids the way we had, but this was only one adjustment we had to make to future national park trips.

Bison Traffic Jam in Yellowstone

After successfully camping with toddlers in Olympic National Park, we reserved some tent cabins in Yosemite a year in advance. When we got there, however, our three-year-olds were concerned about our electricity-free accommodations and, once the sun went down, they began to get very anxious. Their anxiety peaked at 4:00 a.m. and they both woke up screaming at the top of their lungs. We decided it was wise to leave immediately, so I packed by candlelight while my husband Allan drove the kids around and around the campground with their favorite kiddie music tape playing over and over. We hastily left Yosemite and drove east out of the park to a regular hotel near Mono Lake.

It became obvious our strategy had to evolve to accommodate the changing capabilities and interests of our growing children so it was almost two years before we dared brave another national park with our kids.

Measuring Bear Scat

Yellowstone, the oldest national park in the system, was well worth the wait. It provided a number of features that amazed our then four-and-a-half year olds: geysers and getting close to huge, exotic wildlife. It also offered the possibility of interesting side trips close to the park, such as visiting a bear sanctuary. Again, however, our children weren't particularly interested in hiking until I found two items in the gift shop that became indispensable trail-walking accessories: kid-sized binoculars and a laminated Animal Tracks (Waterford Press) chart with pictures of the paw prints and scat of a huge number of animals. This was the hook that we needed--our kids began to see our Yellowstone hikes as adventures where they could use their budding scientific skills. It was a thrill for them to use our "poop chart" to determine whether the dried feces they measured meant a bear had earlier walked the same trail!

Admiring the View

Our next national park trip was to Death Valley, chosen for two reasons: (1) it had a wide variety of dramatic hikes under two miles in length and (2) it offered another activity sure to be a hit: swimming outdoors in the hotel pool. Later that year, we visited two national parks in Alaska, Glacier Bay and Kenai Fjords, as part of a cruise we took along with my mother-in-law. Our time in each park was minimal, but it was just as well since we had learned that our school-age children are best able to enjoy a national park in small doses while combining a visit with other activities.

For more info on visiting National Parks, see  trekaroo and  Visiting America's National Parks with Kids and Family Adventure Travel in Utah.