This year, visiting our national parks—one of America’s favorite summer pastimes—will take a bit of extra strategizing. Following the trend of recent years, summer 2023 is shaping up to once again shatter visitor records across the national parks system.
The National Park Service recorded nearly 312 million recreational visits in 2022, a five percent increase over the number of visits in 2021. As you can imagine, this increased wear and tear on hiking trails, park roads, visitor centers, and park amenities like restrooms, restaurants, and gift shops. Road construction, trail repairs and closures, and traffic delays will be widespread this summer.
Worse still, record snowfall in the West is still melting, causing troubles of its own, like flooding and landslides. So, as you gear up to have a memorable national parks vacation, keep organized and stay on top of park websites and social media for the latest updates—and most of all, stay patient and flexible. Here’s what you should expect.
There will be a lot of traffic
Prepare for road closures and delays. From Grand Teton and Glacier to Rocky Mountain and Zion—even the Blue Ridge Parkway—units across the National Park Service are diligently making much-needed repairs and upgrades to roads, hiking trails, parking lots, and visitor facilities.
At Yellowstone, construction projects are taking place across the park to address last year’s devastating flood damage, stabilize road bridges, and rehabilitate the most heavily trafficked routes, including a 20+ mile section of Grand Loop Road, which allows access to Old Faithful.
Pro tip: Stay on top of park websites for closures, delays, and traffic. Yellowstone, for one, has a page dedicated to updates on road status, including wait times and live webcams showing current traffic conditions at park entrances.
