National Park

I’ve recently been on a little NP visiting craze, but I don’t feel I’ve been maximizing my visits. Makes me wonder: what makes you guys “satisfied” with visiting a park?

My experience:

1. Grand Canyon: South Rim visitor center, Desert View point
2. Zion: drove through on the way back from Antelope to LV, did not stop anywhere due to not enough time
3. Lassen: Cinder Cone hike, to base

Each of these parks I essentially just went on Google and looked up where to go in each park, and picked one of the top 5 most famous ones.

Does this vary by park or do they all open at same time, certain months prior to the camping season? I have never really done any camping. I have always stayed in close by hotels. Thank you!

I posted previously (on a different sub) about how a mining company is planning to drill for lithium less than 1/2 mile from the amazing Ash Meadows wildlife refuge that borders Death Valley NP & the devastating damage that will do to the endangered species there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vegaslocals/comments/1cofnvg/save_ash_meadows/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

This same mining company has now filed for hundreds of more mining locations in Nevada, all along the Armagosa, and now Death Valley itself may be hurt by their actions.

https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/hundreds-of-new-mining-claims-threaten-death-valley-national-park-tribal-water-resources-2024-05-16/

If they find lithium, which they say they will, the mining company intends to use 8000 acres for mining — right along the border to DV. This drilling will hit the water table that feeds not just the springs at Furnace Creek inside the park but also the water that the Timbisha Shoshone reservation in the park uses for drinking water (as well as the DV Visitors Center).

I know multiple posts about the same issues can get annoying but this is a real threat to this park that we love, as well as the native individuals who call this area home.

A lot of the local governments in the NV towns close to these mining locations are calling for a pause in the mining company’s activities — Beatty, Armagosa Valley, I think even Pahrump. But so far they’re pushing forward despite the opposition. Now CA is set to be impacted too — the operations are set to begin 1 mile away from the DV border.

If you visit DV and want to help! The Armagosa Conservancy is still the only place I’ve found who is organizing against this. You can fill out a form to oppose the mining or donate here, if you’re able:

https://www.amargosaconservancy.org/saveashmeadows/

Thanks for your time, I appreciate it.

Most parks I'm looking at for a road trip seem to have large forests with dispersed camping surrounding the parks. For example, I'm considering camping in Kaibab National Forest and entering the Grand Canyon during my visit. Does anyone have experience just camping in the surrounding forests/areas and entering the parks during the day? I'd much prefer this to crowded campsites inside the parks, but if there's something I'm missing I'd like to know.

We will be in Acadia in 2 weeks (!!!) and are trying to nail down our itinerary a little more than explore Acadia. We will have 4.5 days to explore. We are staying at a hotel and expecting to arrive at little after lunch on Saturday. Our thoughts were to spend the afternoon exploring downtown bar harbor since we will likely arrive before check-in. The next 4 days we have thing we would like to do, all flexible to move around as we wish.

Things we would like to do are spend a day on the schoodic peninsula, see Cadillac mountain (if we can get a pass), do some hiking, and go some stargazing.

We don't have any firm hiking plans, though hiking along sand beach to the otter cliffs and back is the only thing we wrote down. We are not new hikers, but also not into climbing ladders for hiking trails. I'm sure the view is amazing, but we already decided we won't be hiking the beehive trail. Any must do hike recommendations out there? Or places to eat? Ideas for potential rainy days? We're not really into art museums, but are open to other museums.