For Many, Summer Means Visits to National Parks

Searches for National Parks on Cost2Drive.com on the Increase

Grand Canyon National Park (Photo Credit: B Rosen)

Heading into the Fourth of July holiday weekend I thought it would be interesting to see if visitors to  Cost2Drive.com have been searching for national parks on our site as they tend to be popular destinations for summer vacations.  I also wanted to see if the new autocomplete feature we added to the site in the beginning of June was having an impact as it now makes it super easy to find national parks on Cost2Drive.

It turns out the answer on both accounts can be seen in the chart below.  There is definitely a strong upward trend for searches for national parks on Cost2Drive heading into the summer travel season, and there was a noticeable bump in national park searches immediately after we launched the autocomplete feature.

Weekly Searches for National Parks on Cost2Drive.com

The autocomplete feature also has the benefit of helping bad spellers (like myself) find the correct spelling for a location and may educate us in other ways as well (did you know that Mount Rushmore is actually a National Memorial, not a National Park?).

So what national parks (or memorials) are visitors to Cost2Drive.com searching for?  The pie chart below displays the top 10 searches for national parks during the week of June 20th.  As you can see in the chart, the Grand Canyon remains the grand daddy of all national parks as it came in first place on the list.

Share of Top 10 National Park searches on Cost2Drive.com

If you’re thinking of visiting one of these national treasures this summer and want to find out how much it will cost check out Cost2Drive.com to quickly calculate the cost of driving to the national parks based on real time gas prices along the route, and then visit the official government site for the US National Park Service for additional information on items like lodging and entrance fees.  For your convenience we’re providing the links to the official Websites of the  national parks referenced in the chart above along with the vehicle entrance fee for each park.

1. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona ($25 entrance fee)
2. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho ($25 entrance fee)
3. Yosemite National Park, California ($20 entrance fee)
4. Glacier National Park, Montana ($25 entrance fee – summer)
5. Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota (entrance is free but parking is $11)
6. Zion National Park, Utah ($25 entrance fee)
7. Arches National Park, Utah ($10 entrance fee)
8. Great Smokey Mountains National Park, Tennessee, North Carolina (FREE!)
9. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ($20 entrance fee)
10. Badlands National Park, South Dakota ($15 entrance fee)

We hope everyone has a joyful and safe Independence Day weekend.  Summer is here at last so lets get out and enjoy it, and if you’re interested in other road trip excursions this July 4th weekend check out these 50 Drives of a Lifetime.

Happy Driving!

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