I finally took the time to go through our family’s pictures from our #10NationalParksin14Days trip this fall, and I am feeling all the feels. Whoa! So much to unpack. There was so much fun had, so much stress, and so many priceless family memories all packed into our 54 hour roadtrip with a 2 and 5 year old. We went to the four National Parks in Colorado, the five National Parks in Utah, and the one and only National Park in Nevada.
I knew I’d feel inspired when we got back to write about our experience and turn it into a guide for other adventure-seeking families with little ones. So, here you have it! This is my husband and I’s guide to roadtripping with littles, my tips on photographing iconic national parks, and my rankings on which parks are most kid-friendly. I’m hoping you feel inspired to get out there and make this trip happen for your family!
Itinerary
Download our family’s itinerary here. We chose to put the bulk of the driving at the front end of the trip, so we took a hard-and-fast approach to getting as far West as we could and then making day trips to National Parks as we slowly snaked our way back to Missouri. We also heard that Zion has a capacity limit, so we rearranged our schedule to hit Zion on a weekday. We lucked out with this approach too - our boys were super sick the first 4 days of the trip - and we didn’t miss out on too much while putting in car miles. However, if we were to do it over again, we would start in southern Colorado at Great Sand Dunes and head West from there, making a big circle to end at Rocky Mountains.
Kid Approved Roadtrip tips
Make a Visual to Help Kids Track Your Trip. Probably the best thing I did when preparing for this trip was to DIY the car tray you see above. We ordered a road map with all 10 National Parks on it, cut it to size, and enlisted the help of my son’s preschool teacher to laminate the map. My 5 year old could follow along with where we were, draw on the map with a dry erase marker, and use it as a food or activity tray when he wanted to. It helped cut down on the “Are we there yet?” questions!
Stock up on Snacks and Sandwich Makings. Prepare yourself for lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It’s a lunch you can eat anywhere you are and you can eat it on your own time (better than having to find a restaurant and wait in line). Time is precious! There are plenty of times we drove through nothingness for more than an hour without seeing a single gas station or food place (hello Utah!), and a few National Parks we visited that did not have food for purchase inside the park. We stocked up on about $50 worth of granola bars, fruit cups and peanut butter crackers at Aldi before taking this trip, and that made a huge difference. We also took a cooler in the car to keep string cheese, milk, soda and apples at the ready.
Don’t Underestimate the Value of Movie Time. I bought a seat-back storage device for the kids and stocked it full of educational toys, drawing pads, interactive books, a preschool handwriting practice binder, and small cars and trucks. But at the end of the day, our saving grace to pass the time was always movie time. Thank you Disney and car DVD player.
Colorado Parks
Great Sand Dunes National Park
#6 for Photography
#2 for Kid-Friendly
Great Sand Dunes gets my vote for the most kid-friendly Colorado national park. I’m already looking forward to going back. The sand dunes area has all the benefits of a beach day without the water hazard - it’s mostly flat, soft to fall into, and easy to spot someone in for miles. We let our kids loose to run, play in the sand, and slide down the hills! (Make sure to call ahead and rent out sandboards from one of the local concessionaires just outside the park) It had an amazing visitor center with lots of interactive activities for the kids like digging in the sand, rotating blocks and viewing desert animal habitats. And huge bathrooms with baby changing stations. Bonus: The Junior Ranger Program is a one-pager that kids can complete in less than an hour to earn their badge.
I loved photographing my family in the sand dunes! This park is great if you're looking for candids and action shots of your children. However, it’s not great for landscape photography - you really need a subject in the frame for perspective. The sand dunes against the backdrop of the mountains is picturesque but hard to capture. Being in the sand dunes makes it hard to actually capture the sheer expansiveness of the sand dunes. And there is no shade near the dunes. So you’ll have to make do with harsh shadows from mid-day sun.
Mesa Verde National Park
#7 for Photography
#3 for Kid-Friendly
Are your kids ready to climb? Because this is the real deal. The night before you visit the park, buy each family member a ticket at the Visitor’s Center to the Cliff Palace tour. The next day, your whole tour group will travel up and down wooden ladders and stone stairs to explore the remarkably well-preserved Pueblo cliff dwellings. Our oldest kiddo loved climbing the ladders and learning from our guide. Our youngest was in the hiking backpack and protested most of the time, but it wouldn’t have been safe to let him try it on his own. Too many drop-offs for a 2 year old on this tour! There was also lodging and food available at the top of the mesa, convenient bathrooms, and three Visitor’s Centers that were all nice. Bonus: The gift shops were full of beautiful Pueblo artwork and pottery.
This park’s hillsides were gorgeous in red and yellow fall foliage! There was also a lot of interesting cultural and natural things to photograph. The highlight was photographing Cliff Palace during our tour, which was always in shade and evenly lit. There were also lots of pullouts to view smaller houses and cliff dwellings.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
#10 for Photography
#10 for Kid-Friendly
This park didn’t seem ready to be a National Park. No running water, so we were left with pit toilets and changing the toddler in the back of the car. Hello hand sanitizer. The visitor center was nice, with a huge window and back porch that overlooked the canyon. All of the hikes we did were short and fairly flat, and each led you to a dead-end at the canyon. With littles that like to wiggle, this was nerve-wracking, and there was much squirming as we attempted to hold our children back from the mile-high cliff edges. As adults, we would have loved to venture down into the canyon on their most popular hike with steep drop-offs and switchbacks, but it was not in the cards with kids.
Much like Mesa Verde, Black Canyon’s fall foliage was beautiful! But that was really the only thing going for it. The massive expansiveness of the canyon was overwhelming and hard to capture. There were plenty of hikes that provided birds eye viewpoints. However, daytime hours created harsh shadows on the already-black canyon walls. A wide-angle lens would have been helpful, but I’m not sure it would have done the scenery justice. My best photographs from the canyon only show about 1/3rd of the canyon’s height. It’s just that HUGE and TALL.
Rocky Mountains National Park
#5 for Photography
#5 for Kid-Friendly
Rocky Mountain National Park brought quite the scenery change - especially the wildlife! The kids loved seeing all the elk gather in the park. We enjoyed the Alluvial Fan hike and the Bear Lake hike, both fairly flat and easy hikes to do with kids. Our 5 year old loved the Ranger Talk about black bears. It was especially nice to have the attached tourism area of Estes Park, with plenty of sit down restaurants, walkable shops and even a playground right next to the creek. This park is one of my all-time favorites for many reasons. However, we went on a weekend and it was SO crowded that we decided to take the provided shuttle bus (kids loved the ride!) but it still took us a full 90 minutes to get through the entrance to the park and get to our hikes. Real bummer.
The mountains. The animals. The water. Oh my! So many wall art worthy landscapes to photograph. I enjoyed stopping at all of the pulloffs to take photos as we ascended the mountain to the Alpine Visitor Center. We were there in the fall and had a freak snowstorm, which made for pretty snow pictures, but this park is excellent to photograph in every season.
Nevada Park
Great Basin National Park
#2 for Photography
#7 for Kid-Friendly
While this park did not have a kid-friendly set up, we still had a blast as a family! It felt like we drove through nothingness for hours, but we finally made it to the tiny town outside the park with one gas station and 2 places to stay. The park itself is much like Rocky Mountains, except way less crowded and much more tranquil, with the added bonus of Lehman Cave. The cave tour requires complete discipline (no touching cave walls!), silence at the end, and being ok with complete darkness. My husband and our 5 year old went on the tour of the cave and loved every minute climbing through the spaces, while I stayed behind with the toddler. Lord knows he was NOT going to make it and we couldn’t take the hiking backpack due to the tight spaces. We loved our 1-mile each way family hike to Stella Lake, which was a fairly flat hike through the pretty aspen trees and open spaces. We saw an abundance of wild turkeys and birds, and ate lunch at the lake.
Great Basin was one of my favorite parks to photograph. I’m a sucker for fall aspen trees and freshly fallen snow. I loved how clear and blue Stella Lake was, perfectly situated at the foot of the mountain like it was made to be photographed. If we were to go back, we’d spend at least 3 days here, making sure to visit the Bristlecone Pine forest. There is so much to explore in this park.
Utah Parks
Zion National Park
#4 for Photography
#1 for Kid-Friendly
Zion was our family’s favorite National Park. For such a small park, Zion is packed full of adventures, and in 2 days we still weren’t able to explore them all! We knew there was a vehicle limit within the park, but we underestimated this park’s popularity. Get there first thing in the morning to get in! On our first day, we drove through the crowded Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel and explored a slot canyon on Gifford Canyon Trail. The boys enjoyed walking in the sandy canyon and “climbing” the sharp walls. On our second day, we ditched our car and opted to use the park’s shuttle bus system (no cars allowed through half the park), which the kids LOVED riding on. Stop #5 was Zion Lodge, which had a full service restaurant and fast food options, really nice bathrooms, and a huge grassy open space for the kids to play. We sat on large rocking chairs like old people and sipped mochas from the grab-and-go place while they ran off energy. This stop also had the Emerald Pools Trail, which was a fun but moderately difficult paved path for our stroller to navigate as we hiked up and down to the pools and waterfall. The Pa’rus Valley Trail at Stop #3 was another favorite because it’s paved and flat, and runs right next to the water, so we pushed the stroller or let both kids walk that one. The visitor center and the museum were both really nice indoor options too.
Photographing Zion was challenging but always interesting. The mid-day sun provided harsh highlights and shadows on the very TALL rock formations. I found the best angles when we were driving the Mount Carmel Tunnel, because the road switch-backed up high enough to get out of the valley and get some perspective. I found that underexposing my photos tamped down the highlights a bit. Sunset was especially beautiful on the Pa’rus Valley Trail as I walked along the river, photographing the deer and the setting sun on the rock formations.
Capitol Reef National Park
#9 for Photography
#8 for Kid-Friendly
Capitol Reef is a low-key drive-through park that is best enjoyed in the fall season. We briefly stopped by the visitor center to learn about the water pocket fold, walked a few feet to see petroglyphs on a rock wall, and hiked about a mile into the Cohab Canyon trail from the Hickman Bridge parking lot. But our favorite part of this park was the apple and pear DIY picking fields! Our kids enjoyed freely running through the grass, picking fruit from the trees and eating it on the spot. The DIY picking fields are only open in the fall season and a small donation is encouraged.
Capitol Reef was just not that exciting to photograph. The capitol looking “crown” was neat, but that was about it. I did enjoy taking candid photos of my family picking pears in the valley, which was naturally shaded by the tall rock walls nearby.
Bryce Canyon National Park
#1 for Photography
#6 for Kid-Friendly
Hoodoo? You do! Our family conquered the challenging 3.1 mile Wall Street/Queens Garden Loop Trail that took us by Bryce Canyon’s famous hoodoo rock formations, and I am so proud we made it! With the toddler in the hiking backpack on my husband, I was worried I was going to have to carry my 5 year old out. Starting at the topmost part of the rim at Wall Street, we hiked steep switchbacks down into the canyon, walked along the flat bottom for some time, and then came back up the winding Queen’s Garden Trail. Then we hoped on the shuttle bus, and our oldest child instantly fell asleep in my arms as we rode back to our starting point. We also enjoyed the Visitors Center with nice bathrooms and kid-friendly exhibits to play in and explore.
Bryce Canyon is a dream to photograph! It seemed that at every moment of the day, there was something new to photograph at Bryce Canyon - and lots of overlooks and places to hike down into the canyon to get different angles. The dimension and contrast the sun creates on the canyon walls and hoodoos is unreal and ever-changing minute by minute. My family indulged my photography needs and woke up before dawn so I could get to Bryce Point overlook for sunrise, and it was absolutely worth it! Sunrise over Bryce Canyon is one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen. The sun slowly lights up the rough canyon walls as it emerges from the ridge and turns brownish red rocks into beautiful colors of orange. But snap your photos fast - because it’s gone in less than 20 minutes! Sunset is also pretty at Bryce Canyon as it goes down behind the amphitheater rocks, providing you a very pretty sky background but more of a 1-dimensional flat look of the canyon. Also, unlike the other Utah parks, it was an unexpected treat to see evergreen trees surrounding the famous canyon.
Canyonlands National Park
#8 for Photography
#9 for Kid-Friendly
Canyonlands was very difficult to enjoy as a family. For one, it’s absolutely huge and divided up into three districts, which are not connected by drive-able roads. Of the three districts, we chose to visit the Island in the Sky District, which offered mostly pullouts with views down into the expansive canyon. Second, it had no running water, so we were left with pit toilets and changing a toddler on the nearest picnic table. Yuck. The best part of this park was the short hike we took to Mesa Arch, which was fairly kid-friendly until the dead-end at the arch and miles high drop-off underneath. I think this park is meant to be enjoyed for weeks at a time camping or off-roading through the wilderness. If we went back, we would visit the Needles District in a Jeep and see where it would take us.
Canyonlands is vast, expansive, and difficult for landscape photography. I did enjoy the hike to Mesa Arch and the resulting photographs from that spot, which framed the canyonlands well. But aside from that spot, there’s not a lot to focus on.
Arches National Park
#3 for Photography
#5 for Kid-Friendly
Arches National Park had a nice big Visitor Center at the entrance point and some great hikes for littles. We really enjoyed the moderate Landscape Arch hike, which was relatively flat and equal parts gravel and sand to walk on. Our favorite kid-friendly “hike” was a short walk back to the Sand Arch, where the kids LOVED playing in the sand and sliding down the natural sand slide underneath. Delicate Arch is supposed to be the most iconic and picturesque part of this park, but we chose not to do the 4 mile hike with our kids to see it. Don’t think they would have made it! There are no restaurants or lodges in the park, so we enjoyed PB&Js for both lunch and dinner.
Arches is packed full of photo opportunities. The drive North through the park, on its own, takes you by tall arches that seem to reach to the sky. Earlier in the day, I had seen a photo in the gift shop of the Turret Arch through the frame of the North Windows Arch, and I knew I had to find that spot and get the angle. So at sunset, my husband entertained the kids while I hiked through the Windows Arch and high up into the rocks beyond. I waited until the sun was just right to capture both arches in the shot. It was pretty amazing stuff for this mom photog!