Park Week exists because most national-park itineraries are either a fantasy (too many trailheads, too little driving honesty) or a scrapbook (a personal trip presented as a template). This site is neither. It is a publisher product: Gary Thomas edits week-length hubs that a stranger could book.
That sentence matters. The publisher is not claiming to have completed every hike named in a hub. If a page needs a first-person trail condition, it should come from the National Park Service, a concessioner, or a dated public notice — not from a reconstructed memory.
What “a week” means here
A Park Week is three to seven days, counted as nights-in-the-gateway plus a departure buffer. We pick a length that lets a traveler see the park’s distinct pieces without treating a two-hour transfer as a footnote. Olympic is six days because the Hoh is not next to Hurricane Ridge. Zion is four because the main canyon is operationally dense, not geographically huge. Glacier is five because Many Glacier is not a sunset whim from Apgar.
If a park cannot be done well in seven days, we would rather publish a narrower hub (South Rim only; west-side Glacier with one east day) than a greatest-hits caption.
The booking stack
Every hub uses the same order on purpose:
- Stay. A primary gateway, an alternate if the primary is a lottery, and a split-stay note when bouncing is worse than packing twice.
- Two paid activities. Scheduled tours or rentals that can be found through Viator (or the same operators). We write a skip clause so the week still works if you hate boats or horses.
- Optional travel insurance. A quote from Allianz Travel US if prepaid lodging or weather-sensitive tours are hard to undo. Insurance is never required to enter a park or to use this site.
Lodging links go to Priceline and Hotels.com. Those are affiliate relationships through Commission Junction. They are disclosed in the header, on the FTC disclosure page, and next to every booking button.
Sources we trust first
- National Park Service park pages, alerts, and accessibility PDFs.
- Recreation.gov for timed entry, permits, and lottery products.
- Concessioner pages for shuttles, boats, and in-park lodges.
- Typical highway drive times, padded for weekend and leaf-season traffic rather than the most optimistic GPS result.
- Seasonal climate normals and the park’s own “current conditions” language — especially for Going-to-the-Sun, Hurricane Ridge Road, and Virgin River flash-flood windows.
We do not scrape anonymous reviews and turn the loudest complaint into a “local tip.” We do not invent wildlife. We do not publish “secret” parking that is someone else’s driveway.
What we refuse to optimize
We will not write a 14-stop day because it ranks. We will not imply that skipping a famous trail is a character flaw. We will not treat a helicopter as the grown-up way to see a canyon. We will not say you must buy insurance. We will not hide that some paid activities are just rentals with a schedule.
How hubs get updated
Reservation systems change. Zion’s shuttle, Acadia’s Cadillac timed entry, Glacier’s vehicle reservations, and the Smokies parking tag have all been moving targets. When we learn a rule has changed, the hub should say “verify on the NPS page,” not pretend Park Week is the permit office. Send corrections via contact with a URL.
Affiliate IDs may still be placeholders. Until Commission Junction advertiser applications are approved — Priceline/Hotels.com first, Viator next, Allianz Travel US last — outbound links go to the public advertiser sites untracked. That is intentional. We will not wrap http:// URLs in CJ click trackers, and we will not go live with tracking on a site that is not served over HTTPS.
Independence
Park Week is not affiliated with the National Park Service or the U.S. Department of the Interior. Advertisers do not write itineraries. If a tour is in a hub, it is because it fits the week’s geography, not because it paid for a better slot than the other tour.