alexghackett

Going to be biking from San Francisco, CA to Boston, MA on the TransAmerican trail this summer and wanted to know if anyone has every bought a National Park Pass. Wanted to hear about other peoples' experience and if it was worth it. Thanks in advance.

kayakdiver

In my experience.... Not really. On the bike getting into the park is cheap and not that many parks have entrance fees. In washington I can only think of two.. Olympic National Park and that is only to go up to Hurricane Ridge(all other entrances into the park are free) and then Rainier National Park. Both have a fee of I think $5 or maybe it's $7? for a bicycle and that's for a whole week last I checked.

YMMV.

prathmann

I have bought the annual pass several years. Just depends on how many parks you plan to visit during the year and what their admission fees are. The last time I bought one I was bicycling to Yosemite ($10 for cyclists) in the spring and then my daughter and I were taking an extended car trip with visits to a couple dozen parks between California and her school in Wisconsin. Definitely worthwhile to have the Park Pass that year since the regular admission fees would have been a few hundred dollars. The pass is good for 12 months and the beginning date is punched when you visit your first park. I also used it at a variety of local locations that are run by the National Park Service and charge admission fees: Muir Woods, John Muir home, Pinnacles, SF Aquatic Park museum, Lassen.

nancy sv

We've always found it to be worth it - but we are a family of four. Due to the national park rules, we would EACH have to pay the entrance fee because we enter on separate vehicles!! (Hubby and son on a tandem only have to pay one) That means, even if it is only $10 per bike, we were paying $30 for that one park! Since the pass was $75, it made sense to buy it even if we only visited a couple of parks.

The other thing it helped with is that is good for ALL national parks, monuments, and recreation areas. A couple of times, the road we were on passed through a recreation area and we would have had to pay to use the road. The pass got us through free.

As the poster above said, check your route and see which parks you'll be visiting. Some charge and some don't so it's hard to say if it'll be worth it until you do the math.

wheel

I bought one and used about half of the 80 bucks. Think of it as donating. I did like how I didn't have to worry about carrying cash to the parks.