Tenaya Lake, Yosemite National Park, California

What to do will vary from Park to Park and is dependent on the time of year. The summer season for several of the parks tends to be quite short as they are northerly or at altitude and the snow takes a while to melt and comes back early. Winter sports (unsurprisingly) are available only in the winter…..

In general most of the parks offer outdoor activities and a whole host of interesting things to look at. As an indicative list they are great places to go to

• enjoy the great outdoors
• admire some amazing scenery
• look for interesting animals, birds and plants
• go picnicking; the Park Service is really good at providing good quality picnic areas with tables and benches
• enjoy some kind of physical activity; from gentle ambles to challenging hikes, from wading in streams to white water rafting……
• take advantage of being at least a little way away from civilisation and go star gazing.

We have put a separate page on hiking in this section. We have used to term ‘hiking’ to distinguish the sort of activity for which you need boots from ‘walking’ by which we mean the sort of activity that can be done in any comfortable flat shoe. It makes sense to us and hopefully does to you too! All the Parks have short trails or boardwalks that are suitable for buggies and can easily be done in flip flops and many have the opportunity for some really challenging hiking.