{"id":10530,"date":"2026-04-10T14:55:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=10530"},"modified":"2026-04-10T14:55:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:55:28","slug":"why-you-should-visit-the-most-crowded-national-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=10530","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Visit the Most Crowded National Parks"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Updated April 10, 2026 08:31AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Cades Cove is spectacular. Not in a Niagara Falls, \u201cin your face\u201d sort of way, but in a subtle, \u201cnotice the dance between shadow and light\u201d sort of way. Bright green mountains rise steeply from a grassy valley and then taller mountains, a deep shade of blue, rising higher beyond that first row of peaks, and then another ridgeline beyond that\u2026rows of mountains progressing in lighter shades of blue that eventually melt into the sky. Broad meadows are hemmed in by lush hardwoods with horses frolicking in the grass between the forested border.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the only one\u00a0who\u00a0thinks this pastoral valley inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) is gobsmacking. I\u2019m sitting in a long line of traffic just to get a peek. Cades Cove is one of the most popular destinations in the most visited national park in the country. According to the park service\u2019s visitation survey<\/a>, almost half of all GSMNP\u2019s visitors plan to see Cades Cove during their visit. The cove will see more people in a month than some national parks see in a calendar year. And they\u2019re all crammed into the same 11-mile, one-way loop road around the valley.<\/p>\n

It took me about three hours to make it around the entire cove with the traffic. The crazy part? Cades Cove is so stunning, I didn\u2019t mind the traffic and the crowds. It made me realize that everyone should carve out a little time on their next adventure to see the obvious places. I\u2019m talking about the destinations on the postage stamps. The scenes on the posters. Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon (not from a secret vantage point that takes hours to hike to, but from the South Rim, the same spots that the tour buses stop at for photos), Jackson Lake, The Narrows; the list is endless.<\/p>\n

A Case for Not Skipping the Greatest Hits<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve spent my career writing about under-appreciated gems and destinations away from the crowds. I\u2019ve lost track of the number of articles I\u2019ve written about the alternatives to these obvious places with headlines like \u201cSkip the Crowds at Yosemite Valley; Go Here Instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s my job to find solitude, peace, and quiet. Seeking a slice of wilderness away from the masses is important. I\u2019m a firm believer that those moments of zen in the middle of nowhere are good for our souls.<\/p>\n

I had avoided Cades Cove for decades solely because I knew it would be crowded, but I was being a snob. There\u2019s a reason why that scene, the one with people stacked three deep trying to catch a glimpse, is on the poster. Yosemite Valley, Old Faithful, Angels Landing<\/a>, Cades Cove\u2026these places are absolutely stunning and worth all of the hassle. These places are worth your time and effort, not just because they\u2019re beautiful, but because<\/i> they draw a crowd. There\u2019s something to be said for standing shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of strangers and staring at something gorgeous. Especially in 2026, when we seem to have less and less we can agree on in this country.<\/p>\n

Sharing the Stoke With Others<\/h2>\n

A couple of years ago, I was on a trip through Yellowstone National Park. I was hitting some lesser-known corners of that park, seeing thermal features that aren\u2019t on a lot of people\u2019s radar. Usually, they require longer approach hikes. But some of the other people I was with wanted to see Old Faithful. So we went to Old Faithful Basin and stood in a crowd of people and waited for one of the most dependable natural wonders of the world to put on a show. I thought about skipping the whole scene and finding a beer somewhere, but I\u2019m glad I stuck it out. When this geyser shot hot, steaming liquid more than 100 feet into the air, I couldn\u2019t help but smile and look at the random dude next to me and say, \u201cHoly\u00a0shit!\u201d And he smiled at me and said, \u201cI know!\u201d<\/p>\n

Crowd enjoying the famous Old Faithful geyser eruption in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (Photo: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I finally hiked Angel\u2019s Landing this past winter. I had been to Zion National Park at least half a dozen times previously, but never bothered with Angel\u2019s Landing because it was always so packed. The hike is so popular, you literally have to win the lottery to experience it\u00a0these days.<\/p>\n

On this trip, I started my hike very early in the hopes of avoiding the masses. And it worked. I got up to the rocky outcropping and enjoyed the view in relative solitude. I hung out on the outcropping for a while, but when more people started to show up, I decided to make my way back down the sketchy out-and-back\u00a0traverse.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>On the way back, I encountered a woman who was battling her fear of heights. She was paralyzed in fear, with only about 50 yards of rock left to navigate before she felt she could say she had hiked Angel\u2019s Landing. So I helped her. I walked back to the end for the second time while she held a hand on my shoulder for stability. Being able to see this woman\u2019s face as she<\/i> got to enjoy the view was so much better than the view itself. I\u2019ll remember the look on her face long after I forget the scene of the landscape.<\/p>\n

The Obvious Places Are Our Country\u2019s Highlight Reel<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s easy to brush past these obvious destinations in pursuit of something more private, but these overcrowded views are an important part of the legacy of our national park system. Old Faithful\u2019s splendor is one of the reasons President Grant established Yellowstone National Park, the very first such land designation in the world. These obvious places help weave the fabric of America\u2019s identity, and they shouldn\u2019t be an afterthought. They should be appreciated as our country\u2019s highlight reel.<\/p>\n

I understand what I\u2019m saying here sounds a little counterintuitive. It\u2019s like a music critic suggesting you should spend some time listening to a certain band\u2019s Greatest Hits album instead of diving into their deeper cuts.\u00a0But have you listened to The Beatles\u2019 compilation of their 20 number-one hits? It\u2019s literally nothing but bangers.<\/p>\n

\"Tourists
Tourists overlook the Grand Canyon at sunrise in Grand Canyon, Arizona. <\/span> (Photo: (Photo by Brandon Bell\/Getty Images))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And being able to see one of the bangers from America\u2019s greatest hits album, like El Capitan rising from Yosemite Valley, with a bunch of random people crowded into a viewpoint, is an important part of the experience. To continue the pop music metaphor, it\u2019s like being in a bar when an impromptu singalong of \u201cTiny Dancer\u201d erupts. For that three-and-a-half minutes, all 75 people in that bar are on the same page, sharing the same emotions and thinking the same thing: life is amazing. And it is.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re standing in a crowd, looking at something beautiful, something so stunning that an entire society has decided to prioritize its protection, it\u2019s easy to glance at the crowd and think, \u201cpeople are alright.\u201d<\/p>\n

So maybe carve out more than a little time to visit these obvious places. Maybe sit there and watch the crowds ebb and flow, and marvel at how thousands of perfect strangers have all designed their cherished vacations around the same thing: seeing this beautiful view. Because that idea\u2014a bunch of accountants and school teachers and CEOs and project managers spending their hard-earned free time inside a national park so they could see something pretty\u2014might even be more beautiful than the view itself.<\/p>\n

I admit that I rarely feel a sense of communal wellbeing when I\u2019m sitting in rush hour traffic, but when you add the gorgeous landscape of Cades Cove to the mix, and the realization that we\u2019re all crowded into this pastoral valley for the exact same reason, I get\u00a0a warm fuzzy feeling. Raise your hand if you could use a bit more of those warm fuzzy feelings these days?<\/p>\n

Go to the obvious places. There are warm fuzzies all over them.<\/p>\n\n

Graham Averill is Outside magazine\u2019s national parks columnist. He thinks the perfect visit to any national park has to include at least some time enjoying the park\u2019s greatest hits, even if it\u2019s crowded. He recently wrote about riding <\/i>E-mountain bikes in Moab<\/i>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated April 10, 2026 08:31AM Cades Cove is spectacular. Not in a Niagara Falls, \u201cin your face\u201d sort of way, but in a subtle, \u201cnotice the dance between shadow and light\u201d sort of way. Bright green mountains rise steeply from a grassy valley and then taller mountains, a deep shade of blue, rising higher beyond<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wild-living"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}