For most locations, the busiest season corresponds with schools’ summer break. Off-season visitors find there are fewer people, the traffic is lighter and camping locations are easier to obtain. In addition, some sites are at their peak of beauty during the spring and fall.
“One of the best times to visit Muir Woods is during the fall,” says Joyce Snodgrass, an intern at Muir Woods National Monument in California. “During fall, the crowds are much smaller and visibility is much better than during the summer months.”(”Crowd Free Camping,” Trailer Life, March 1997)
On the trip we just finished, we found that visiting in September — the anticipated off-season –was more crowded than we expected it to be.
We visited Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, and Arches National Parks. The traffic was quite heavy, very similar to what we had experienced in other years during the summer.
It’s a good thing that we had made sure that we had reservations at the campgrounds in the towns where we stayed because they were packed by the end of almost every day, though by last part of the month, in Utah, we were seeing a few empty spots in the campground each night.
One of the owners of the Snake River KOA south of Jackson, Wyoming, said that this was the first time they had ever been this busy in September. We had heard other locals express similar comments in both the Yellowstone area and the Jackson Hole/Teton area.
So why is this year different?
My guess is that it is a mixture of reasons that has resulted in a very busy “off-season.”
For us. the prolonged drought, the heat earlier in the year, and the wildfires in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming are partially why we were there later in the season than we might have been otherwise. I suspect the same is true for a lot of the people who were there.
I believe another reason for the increase in visitors is, at least in part, the depressed value of the dollar against foreign currencies. Wherever we went in the national parks, there were a large number of foreigners, mostly from Europe, but also other regions. One man, from England, alluded as much when he admired my camera. He told me if he got one like it, he’d have to buy it before going back home, because it would be much more expensive in Great Britain.
I seriously hope that this year is an aberration, and not the new norm, or, even worse, a harbinger of things to come.
We plan to do more visiting of interesting places during the off-season — and hope that there will still be an off-season.
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