Largely freed from domestic travel restrictions, Americans have been flocking to national parks in record numbers this spring and summer. Several parks — including Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park — have already set monthly visitation records. Hikers at Zion National Park, in Utah, have faced wait times of four hours to access certain trails. Visitors to Arches National Park, in the same state, are being turned away at the gate — “The park is currently full,” the Parks Service’s Twitter feed routinely announces — and asked to return at a later time. To capture the crowds over the Fourth of July weekend, we sent photographers to four parks: Acadia National Park in Maine; Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona; Joshua Tree National Park in California; and Yellowstone National Park, largely in Wyoming.

Source: New York Times July 08, 2021 23:11 UTC