National Park Week 2026: 7 Epic Adventures to Take Before Summer Ends
The National Park Service turns 110 this week. Celebrate by adding one of these seven adventures to your end-of-summer list.
110 years of national parks
The National Park Service was established on August 25, 1916 — which makes this week its 110th birthday. Whatever else is going on this year, that is a good excuse to put a national park back on the calendar before summer runs out.
You do not need a bucket-list itinerary to make that count. Any one of the seven below is a real, planable trip — some are a weekend, some are a single hard day. Check nps.gov for each park's current entrance fees, since the Park Service periodically designates fee-free days and the list changes year to year.
1. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
High-alpine hiking above treeline, with trailheads close enough to Denver to anchor a long weekend — the same Front Range corridor this site is already building out in depth. Go for the elevation, stay for the fact that you can be above 11,000 feet by mid-morning.
2. Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado
The tallest dunes in North America, backed by a 14,000-foot mountain range — an odd, striking combination and one of the more unusual adventures in the entire park system. Sandboarding and sand-sledding are both allowed, and neither requires a permit.
3. Olympic National Park, Washington
Mountains, temperate rainforest, and a wild Pacific coastline, all inside one park boundary. Few places let you cover that much ecological range in a single trip without a long drive between each piece of it.
4. Acadia National Park, Maine
Sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, granite-ledge hiking, and carriage-road biking that works for almost any fitness level. Small enough to see a meaningful cross-section of it in a long weekend.
5. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan
Multicolored sandstone cliffs rising straight out of Lake Superior — best seen from the water. Kayak tours run along the base of the cliffs in summer, and the paddle is a genuinely different kind of national-park adventure than anything on this list.
6. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee & North Carolina
The most-visited national park in the country, and for a practical reason: it has some of the most accessible hiking in the system alongside a real road-trip draw. A strong pick if you are traveling with a mixed group.
7. Zion or Bryce Canyon, Utah
Either one is a legitimate western bucket-list trip on its own, and they sit close enough together to combine into a single longer one. Zion's canyon narrows and Bryce's hoodoos look nothing alike — that contrast is most of the appeal of doing both.
Put one on the calendar
Pick the one closest to a trip you were already half-planning, confirm current hours and fees on the park's official NPS page before you go, and treat the anniversary as the nudge rather than the plan itself.