The National Park Road Trip

Two and a Half Centuries. One Road Trip. Let’s Go.

The national parks were the first thing this country decided was worth protecting. In the year America turns 250, the best answer we know isn’t a parade or a cable news segment. It’s a road trip.

America turns 250 this year. Not the sanitized, theme-park version of America. The real one — the one with two-lane highways disappearing into canyon country, hot springs steaming up out of nowhere, elk standing in the middle of the road like they own it (they do), and a sky so big at night that you forget your name for a minute.

This road trip connects four corners of the American West through four JET properties — each one a real basecamp within reach of something genuinely wild. You don’t have to do all of it. You don’t have to do it in order. But if you’re going to celebrate 250 years of this country, we’d suggest doing it somewhere with dirt under your boots and a campfire at the end of the day.

Here’s what we’d do

Powell, WY → Tetonia, ID → Escalante, UT → Copalis Beach, WA

Start anywhere. Go any direction. The whole point is the going.

1. Powell, Wyoming · Yellowstone’s East Gate

Start in Wyoming. The Uncrowded Way.

Yellowstone gets four million visitors a year. Most of them are fighting for a parking spot at the West Entrance while you’re rolling in through the back door.

The East Gate — open now as of May 1st — sits 52 miles west of downtown Cody. From Powell, you’re 25 minutes from Cody and right in the heart of what makes this corner of Wyoming worth driving across the country for. The Buffalo Bill Scenic Byway follows the North Fork of the Shoshone River through canyon walls and big valley floor, past bison grazing the riverbanks, past Pahaska Tepee — Buffalo Bill’s own hunting lodge, where he brought guests to tell tales of the Wild West. You haven’t reached the park yet and it already feels like the right kind of America.

Through Sylvan Pass at 8,530 feet, down to Yellowstone Lake — the largest high-elevation lake in North America — and then you’ve got the whole Lower Loop ahead of you. Grand Prismatic. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Old Faithful. All of it, without standing in a two-hour entrance line.

When you’re back in Cody for the evening: the Buffalo Bill Center of the West is five Smithsonian-affiliated museums under one roof. Give it more time than you think it deserves. The Cody Nite Rodeo runs every night all summer — that’s not a typo. Cody is going full Western heritage for America 250: rodeos, parades, live music, and the Cody Stampede over the 4th of July weekend.

STAY HERE

JET Motor Inn Powell – Powell, Wyoming
Downtown Powell. Clean, comfortable, no pretense. Use it the way it was meant to be used: sleep well, get up early, go hard. 15 minutes from Cody. An hour from the East Gate.

★ America 250 — Old West
Cody is celebrating America’s 250th all year long with rodeos, parades, Western heritage events, and the Cody Stampede on July 4th weekend. Time your trip around it if you can. The National Park Service has America 250 passport stampers at Yellowstone — another reason to go early and beat the crowds.

2. Tetonia, Idaho · The Teton’s Quiet Side

Cross the Tetons. Without Crossing into the Crowds.

Most people experience the Tetons from Jackson. Busy, beautiful, expensive. There’s another way.

Teton Valley sits on the Idaho side of the range — the quiet side. Same mountains, same jaw-drop views, fraction of the noise. The Tetons look different from the west. Bigger, somehow. More exposed. You see the full face of the range without the resort infrastructure in the foreground.

The park is best from mid-May through late September — full road access, all trails open, kayaking and fly fishing on the Snake River, moose in the willows at dawn if you’re out early enough. Hit Oxbow Bend for photography. Yellowstone is a day trip north. Grand Targhee runs its bike park and lift-served hiking all summer.

If you can be here in late September: the aspens turn gold, the crowds evaporate, and the elk start bugling across the valley at dusk. One of those experiences that makes you wonder why you’d ever go anywhere else in October.

Mountain range with a jagged rocky peak, blue sky and white clouds; evergreen trees in the foreground.

STAY HERE

Teton Peaks Resort – Tetonia, Idaho
Hotel rooms, glamping, tiny homes, RV sites. Sauna. Community campfire pit. A basecamp, not a resort-resort. Which is exactly the point. North of Driggs, coffee shop onsite and nothing else you don’t need.

★ America 250 — American Pastimes
The Teton Valley Rodeo runs Friday evenings in Driggs from June through August — small-town, no-frills, exactly right. The Teton Valley Balloon Rally over the 4th of July weekend is one of the more quietly spectacular things you can do in the American West. Hot air balloons drifting over the Tetons at sunrise. That’s the kind of memory that sticks.

3. Escalante, Utah · Bryce Canyon + Capitol Reef

Utah will Rearrange Your Sense of Scale.

There is no preparing for southern Utah. You just have to drive into it.

Highway 12 — one of only 37 All-American Highways in the country — connects Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef through nearly two million acres of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It climbs over Boulder Mountain. It narrows to a ridge with canyon on both sides. It passes through a color spectrum that has no business existing in nature — red, orange, cream, purple, all of it layered into the rock like someone was showing off.

Bryce Canyon is 45 minutes west. Go below the rim. Even one trail. The hoodoos look like something from a dream — thousands of thin orange spires packed into an amphitheater, and you’re standing among them. Nothing prepares you for being inside it versus looking down at it from the overlook.

Capitol Reef is two hours east. It’s the least-visited of Utah’s big five parks and possibly the most rewarding. Stop at the Gifford Homestead for a slice of pie — it sells out every single day, so go early or accept that you’re coming back tomorrow. In between: slot canyons, OHV trails, ancient Fremont rock art, and the darkest skies you’ve stood under in years.

STAY HERE

Escalante Grand Resort – Escalante, Utah
25 acres right on Highway 12. Cabins, tent camping, RV sites, and a coffee shop. Full-service basecamp for one of the most dramatic road trip corridors in the country. Dark skies overhead. Everything you need, nothing you don’t.

★ America 250 — America the Beautiful
Southern Utah contains some of the most visually staggering public land in the world — land that belongs to every American. The Grand Staircase alone is nearly two million acres of canyons, arches, ancient ruins, and rock art from cultures that were here long before anyone else. The Escalante Canyons Art Festival runs each fall. Independence Day in Escalante is small-town Americana at its most genuine.

4. Copalis Beach, Washington · Olympic National Park

End at the Edge of the Continent.

Or Start here, if you’re driving the other direction.

Pacific Dunes Resort sits directly on the Washington coast, and from this address, Olympic National Park sprawls across the entire horizon to the north. Nearly a million acres. Mountain peaks, temperate rainforest, and more than 70 miles of wild Pacific coastline — all within reach of your morning coffee.

Olympic is one of the most quietly staggering places in the country. It doesn’t announce itself the way Yellowstone or Bryce does. It just surrounds you — the Hoh Rain Forest draped in moss and silence, sea stacks rising out of the surf, Hurricane Ridge climbing into the mountains above the clouds. This is the westernmost wild in the lower 48. The only temperate rainforest in the continental United States. Forty-nine peaks over 6,500 feet. More than 600 miles of trails.

This coast has been home long before any of the other stops on this trip. The Quinault, the Makah, the Hoh — Indigenous peoples with thousands of years of history on this peninsula. Spend a day and actually learn where you’re standing. You’ll drive home differently.

Stay Here.

Pacific Dunes Resort – Copalis Beach, Washington
Studio suites, tiny homes, and RV sites — all with the Pacific Ocean as your backyard. Beach access. Razor clam country. Extended stay options if you can’t bring yourself to leave. (It happens.)

★ America 250 — Red, White & Blue
National Park Week runs August 22–30, 2026, with the theme “Celebrate America’s Story” — and entrance fees are waived on August 25th for the NPS’s 110th birthday. Olympic National Park is one of the most diverse park systems on earth: beach, rainforest, and alpine wilderness, all in one place. That’s worth celebrating.

Before You Go.

A Few Things Worth Knowing..

Get the America the Beautiful Pass. $80/year. Covers entrance fees at every national park on this route. Pays for itself on day one.
Get up early. Every single park on this route is a different experience at 7am versus 11am. Wildlife, light, crowds — all of it changes.
Slow down on Highway 12. Seriously. There is no rushing that drive. Pull over. Get out of the car. The whole point is out the window.
Book ahead. 2026 is a big year for national parks and JET properties book up fast in summer. Especially around July 4th.
Download offline maps before you enter Utah or Wyoming canyon country. Cell service disappears. Plan on it.
Get the Gifford pie early. Capitol Reef. Sells out daily. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.