Adventure Buddies

When we decided that we wanted to travel out west again, we picked our favorite places from our previous trip and added a few bucket list places.

We knew we wanted to visit The Mighty Five in Utah, Yellowstone, Glacier, and we knew we wanted to try Canada. We’ve watched many blogs about visiting Banff National Park and knew that if we could make it work, this would be at the top of the list.

We narrowed down a list of MUST SEE places on this trip. We got out a map and started jotting down ideas. We didn’t use any app or websites. We basically put stars on our favorites cities and national parks.

Little did we know, in order to book at most of the big national parks(Glacier, Arches, Zion, Yellowstone, Canada National Parks) you have to book way out in advance. We bought our RV in July and started planning immediately. We knew we wanted to start Arizona as our first booked spot, so we basically booked each place based on where we would go first. There were many places that were completely booked when we inquired about making a reservation, so we knew we had to act fast.

Booking vehicle registration passes was a MUST at a few of the parks that we are going to be visiting. That requires a separate post, but the website below is where you book those. Permits for certain hikes are mandatory. All the information about each national park can be found here. I would NOT advise looking at social media pages or links regarding booking information. A lot of times, I noticed that the dates were wrong or the information would be partially correct, but not %100 factual information. You have to do your homework on each park before you decide to visit. Planning at least a 12-18 months out for most parts is also important. There are windows(dates) where you can book vehicle registration passes and permits for hikes. Please be advised that vehicle passes and certain permits fill up within the first 30 seconds that they become available online. Hikes are based on a lottery system. I will also make a post later about that information. https://www.recreation.gov/

Below you will find the link to start researching for a trip to Canada. I will write a separate post with more in depth information about this adventure. Canada was definitely much harder to reserve. https://parks.canada.ca/voyage-travel/reserve

As you can see below, we used many devices to try to get a reservation for vehicle passes, shuttle tickets, lodging, and hiking permits.