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| Above, Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
The days of "in the spur of the moment" national park visits are beginning to be a thing of the past. Several national parks are implementing reservation systems to control crowd numbers.
Condé Nast Traveler has an article with a list of the national parks that are requiring reservations in 2023.
They begin it with:
America's protected lands may be for all—but in 2023, national park reservations are very much a thing.
Since the National Park Service (NPS) started recording visitation numbers in 1904, it's welcomed a total of 15.4 billion recreational visitors to its sites, who come to explore the beauty of America's natural, historical, and cultural wonders. In recent years, those numbers have topped 330 million annual visitors (2022 annual numbers have yet to be released), and the pandemic also saw record-breaking numbers in certain parks, with sites like Yellowstone National Park and Arches National Park surpassing their own monthly records for several months in a row during the popular summer season in 2021.
While the return of more travelers last year—including international travelers as borders reopened—was welcome, it also played tug-o-war with the goal of maintaining the beauty and integrity of the 424 sites preserved by their NPS status. “As a result, parks are exploring many different tools and techniques that are most effective for their situation to help them improve how visitors get to and experience popular park resources and features,” says NPS spokesperson Kathy Kupper.
To read more, go here.
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