Let’s be honest. When most people picture the ultimate American national park experience, they picture Yellowstone. Geysers, bison traffic jams, the smell of sulfur drifting across a steaming landscape. It’s iconic for a reason. But after spending a serious chunk of this year visiting 12 national parks across the country, I walked away with a perspective that might ruffle a few feathers.
Yellowstone is extraordinary. It is also, at this point, wildly overcrowded, sometimes frustrating to navigate, and not actually the best that this country has to offer. Today, Yellowstone has become the Disneyland of national parks, complete with food courts, souvenir shops, and resort villages. That’s not a compliment. So here are the four parks from my journey that genuinely left me more breathless, more moved, and more in awe than Yellowstone did. You might be surprised.
1. Great Smoky Mountains: The Underdog That Crushes Every Metric
Here’s a fact that shocks almost everyone when they first hear it. The National Park Service announced that 400 national parks reported a total of 325.5 million recreation visits in 2023. Of all those visits, one park sits at the very top of the entire system, and it isn’t Yellowstone. Great Smoky Mountains National Park recorded over 13 million visits in 2023, dwarfing Yellowstone’s roughly 4.5 million for the same year. That’s not just a little more popular. That’s in a completely different league.
As one of the few national parks in the eastern portion of the United States, the Great Smoky Mountains is a spectacular place for people on that side of the country to experience a national park. If you’re looking for something truly inspiring, plan your visit for the fall and see the foliage from the Chimney Tops trail. I did exactly that. Nothing in Yellowstone prepared me for the sheer blanket of ancient mountains stretching in every direction, shifting through every shade of orange and gold imaginable.
What actually sets the Smokies apart from Yellowstone in terms of experience is the ecological richness. These mountains are over 300 million years old, nearly 30 times older than the Teton Range. The biodiversity here is staggering, with more tree species than in all of northern Europe combined. Honestly, it feels less like a park visit and more like stepping into a living, breathing forest cathedral.
Only about a dozen national parks are east of the Mississippi, making Great Smoky one of the easiest stops for East Coasters checking off their national parks bucket list. No entrance fee. No timed reservation system. Just an enormous, free, endlessly beautiful park that remains the most visited in the country for a very good reason.
2. Glacier National Park: The Raw, Wild Beauty That Rewires Your Brain
I’ll admit something. Before this trip, I thought Glacier was just a smaller, colder version of Yellowstone. I was completely wrong. Crossed by the mountainous Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park in Montana’s Rocky Mountains is a land of mountain ranges carved by prehistoric ice rivers. With exceptional alpine scenery and deep valleys filled with ancient forests, it’s a year-round paradise. The park is famous for its breathtaking views of big hikes, steep climbs, and high mileage.
The scale of Glacier is something photographs simply cannot communicate. Carved from glaciers past, the landscape here is breathtaking. From the top of Mount Cleveland’s nearly 10,500-foot peak to the bright blue lakes settled in the valleys, there are picture-worthy sites around every corner. Even the smallest things, like the rainbow-colored rocks at the bottom of Lake McDonald or the gorgeous wildflowers throughout the park, are sure to impress.
Glacier recorded roughly 2.9 million visits in 2023, a number that jumped significantly in 2024. So far in 2024, 3,001,595 people have visited the park, just the third time that number has eclipsed 3 million, a 9% increase over the prior year. It’s growing in popularity fast, and honestly, visit sooner rather than later. The park’s glaciers are receding, and what you see today will look different in another decade.
What truly tips Glacier ahead of Yellowstone for me is the intimacy of the experience. Grand Teton National Park has been able to avoid the overcrowding more characteristic of its neighbor to the north, Yellowstone. Here you’ll find spectacular mountains, gorgeous lakes and valleys, and some of the best wildlife viewing opportunities in the entire national park system – and much of that same description applies directly to Glacier. You feel like you’ve earned something here. Like the park respects you back.
3. Zion National Park: Canyon Drama on a Scale That Feels Unreal
There is a moment walking into Zion Canyon when the canyon walls rise around you and the world simply disappears. Nothing prepares you for it. Zion welcomed about 4.6 million visitors in 2023, actually surpassing Yellowstone in raw numbers for the year. Zion National Park, located 3 hours north of Las Vegas near the town of Springdale, features spectacular geologic formations including mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches.
The variety here is what sets it apart. Zion National Park has a rich history dating back approximately 7,000 years, when nomadic Indian groups roamed the area, according to the NPS. That layered sense of human and geological history adds something deeply emotional to every step of a hike. You’re not just looking at rocks. You’re walking through time.
Let’s be real about the hiking. The Narrows, Angels Landing, Observation Point – these are genuinely world-class trail experiences that Yellowstone simply cannot match. Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah is number one on the list of top-rated parks, those with ratings of 4.8 or higher and more than 1,000 reviews on Google Maps, followed by Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska. Zion consistently scores at the very top of visitor satisfaction rankings for good reason.
Zion is the overall winner when it comes to the fall season because fall is the best season in southern Utah. Weather is perfect, it’s less busy, and the cottonwoods are changing. I think the crowd issue at Zion gets overblown, too. Yes, the main canyon gets busy. Step onto any trail beyond the main corridor and you’ll find yourself alone within minutes. That’s something Yellowstone’s massive tourist infrastructure rarely allows.
4. Grand Teton National Park: Yellowstone’s Neighbor That Quietly Steals the Show
Here’s the thing about Grand Teton. It sits just 50 miles from Yellowstone. Most people treat it as a quick side trip on their way to the more famous park. That is, in my honest opinion, one of the great mistakes in American travel. Snow-capped mountains, the stunning 13,775-foot Grand Teton peak, and grazing buffalo are among the park’s most photographed features. Located just 50 miles from Yellowstone, you can experience similar impressive sites with smaller crowds.
Grand Teton saw about 3.4 million visitors in 2023, and it protects the Teton Range along with a significant portion of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Although Yellowstone rightfully receives a lot of attention for its wildlife viewing opportunities, the Grand Tetons are also known for their diversity of wildlife. The rugged mountains provide habitat to a wide variety of wildlife, including black bears, grizzly bears, elk, bison, bighorn sheep, moose, pronghorn, wolves, fox, lynx, bobcats, and mountain lions. There are also more than 300 species of birds, including trumpeter swans, ospreys, and bald eagles.
The skyline created by the Teton Range is extremely recognizable and iconic. Because the Tetons are one of the youngest mountain ranges in the United States at 10 million years old, they are still quite jagged and sharp looking in comparison to smoother ancient mountain ranges. That geological youth gives the landscape an almost aggressive, dramatic beauty you don’t find in Yellowstone’s flatter basin. Every ridge line looks like it was carved by something angry and magnificent.
Grand Teton National Park is truly iconic and, thanks to strong management and foresight, has been able to avoid the overcrowding more characteristic of its neighbor to the north, Yellowstone. It’s a quieter, more personal experience. And in a world where national park visits hit a record 331.9 million in 2024, a little quiet goes a very long way.
So, Is Yellowstone Overrated?
It’s a provocative question, but I think it deserves a straight answer. No. Yellowstone is not overrated in the sense of being unworthy of its reputation. The geothermal features are genuinely unlike anything else on earth. The wildlife density is extraordinary. Yellowstone’s appeal lies in its unique geothermal features and wildlife, not sheer volume. That’s a fair and accurate assessment.
What Yellowstone is, however, is over-relied upon as the default answer to the question of “which park should I visit?” 2024 saw a record 331.9 million national park visits. While that means more folks are unplugging and getting outside, those numbers make it harder for travelers to enjoy some of the country’s most spectacular landscapes. Of the 63 national parks, people tend to flock mostly to well-known names such as Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, and Zion.
The parks that moved me most this year were the ones that surprised me. The ones where I arrived with modest expectations and left feeling genuinely changed. When planning your next outdoor adventure, consider stepping off the well-worn path of popular destinations like Yellowstone or Yosemite. Lesser-known national parks offer incredible advantages that can transform your vacation from ordinary to extraordinary. Picture this: instead of waiting in long lines for parking or jostling for the perfect photo spot, you’re standing in peaceful solitude, taking in breathtaking views all to yourself.
The best national park is the one that makes you feel small in the best possible way. For me, in 2025, that wasn’t Yellowstone. It was the parks that most people drive past on their way there. So here’s a question worth sitting with: if the most visited park isn’t always the best one, where have you not been yet? Tell us in the comments.
<p>The post I Visited 12 National Parks This Year: These 4 Are Actually Better Than Yellowstone first appeared on Travelbinger.</p>