Low-key national parks

Our first campsite was so cramped that tents were piled together like tenements. Our path up to Nevada Falls was congested -- we got stuck behind fanny-pack hikers snapping photos every 200 feet. Our immersion in nature was so, well, unnatural, that we spent mornings and afternoons waiting at bus stops and fighting traffic.

What a difference a few hours, a couple hundred miles and 2.5 million fewer annual visitors can make in a national park.

My friends and I found this out a few summers ago after leaving an overcrowded but certainly not underwhelming Yosemite National Park for a much more solitary experience at nearby Sequoia-Kings Canyon.

We were not ignorant enough to think we'd have the most popular park in the most populous state in America to ourselves. But we didn't really know how much we disliked navigating the crowds (and requisite shuttle buses) in Yosemite until we got to Sequoia-Kings, where the only thing we had to wait on before hitting the trails was the sunrise. The only thing we had to share with other tent campers was the quiet. The only annoying encounter we had while hiking was with a brown bear -- and the annoyance was all his. I swear he gave me a dirty look as he turned to find another route.

There might be ample dirty looks among the human inhabitants at national parks this summer. It promises to be an especially busy year at the big parks. Ken Burns' recent TV series on PBS, "The National Parks," breathed new life -- albeit long-windedly -- into Americans' love affair with their wilderness havens. Meanwhile, the economy is forcing many Americans to take cheaper vacations.

So it's a good year to take our Yosemite lesson to heart. If you're hitting the trail in high season, consider visiting a more low-key park.

Why not Yosemite? Everyone on the planet should see the iconic Yosemite Valley sometime in their life. They just shouldn't all do it during the summer.

The landscape's variety here might even be better. In just one challenging 16-mile day-hike up the High Sierra Trail, we started out in a boulder-lined canyon with cascading waterfalls and worked our way up to Eagle's View, where we couldn't see anything (we had hiked into the clouds). As we headed down the other (shaded) side of the mountain, we hiked over deep snowpack (in mid-June) and into a grove of the park's giant namesake trees -- thicker than those Yosemite buses, and way cooler.

Why not the Smokies? It's not the nation's most renowned park, but Great Smoky Mountains is actually the most visited -- by far. Its average of 9.4 million annual visitors is more than twice that of No. 2, the Grand Canyon. Chalk it up to the Appalachian Trail and the scarcity of parks in the Southeast. Or maybe it's the proximity to Dollywood.

Why Mammoth Cave? The great misconception about Mammoth Cave National Park (in central Kentucky) is that it's just a big hole in the ground. We fell in love with what's above ground, from all the green mountainous scenery to the winding Green River.

Mammoth Cave does see about 600,000 annual visitors, but most come just to hit "the cave" -- which is indeed something to see, an amazing labyrinth of 367 cavernous miles that's said to be the world's longest. If the (guided) spelunking makes you nervous, you can always find liquid courage by touring Maker's Mark or other nearby whiskey distilleries.

Why not the South Rim? One of my most frustrating backpacking experiences happened during a climb up the South Rim from the canyon floor via the Bright Angel Trail, where near the end we were going upstream against a flood of Japanese tourists in dress shoes and others who understood nil about hiking protocol (i.e., get out of the way of those of us with 50 pounds strung to our backs). Campsites close to the South Rim can be hard to come by in high season.

Or is it? Because it's at a higher elevation (8,000-9,000 feet), the North Rim enjoys less haze and better visibility into the canyon, plus some of its vantage points also offer views of the Painted Desert. The elevation makes the North Rim cooler in the summer. For noncampers, the 73-year-old Grand Canyon Lodge is almost as grand and historic as the South Rim's famous El Tovar Hotel. And if you're hiking down into the canyon, the trails are a little less steep and more forgiving.

Why not Glacier or Rainier? Both parks' crush of visitors (just under 2 million annually each) can make the roads feel extra congested, and, with their steep mountain passes, they're naturally slow. Also, some wilderness seekers might be turned off by their relative commercialization, especially Rainier's Colorado ski resort vibe.

Why North Cascades? The question asked by many park junkies is: Why isn't this one more popular? Only three hours northwest of Seattle on the border with British Columbia, North Cascades is just a bit farther away than Olympic National Park or Rainier. It's bigger than Rainier, too, boasting 400 miles of trails, including lots of easy but hard-to-beat mountainside lake loops. Yet it sees only about 100,000 visitors a year.

Like Glacier National Park, North Cascades offers a long line of jagged peaks, many of them as steep as skyscrapers, and with glaciers wrapped around them. The park is developed just enough to be accessible -- there are even ferryboats to take you to remote trail heads -- but for the most part it's sheer wilderness.

One of my all-time favorite campsites required a trek across North Cascades' Ross Dam to a lakeside point where, come morning, we watched the sun break through the surrounding mountains and mist rise off the water. We were camped so close to the lake that I nearly rolled into it when my camping chair fell out from under me (and this wasn't even the trip with the Maker's Mark).

Why stay close to home? When we visited Acadia, we were surprised by how often we said, "This looks like northern Minnesota." Its rocky ocean shoreline, in particular, resembles the North Shore.

Isle Royale on Lake Superior is officially a part of Michigan, but it's only 22 miles offshore from Grand Portage, Minn. Of course, that not-so-little boat ride (two hours) is why more people don't take in the 45-mile-long, lake-dotted island. It might be the mosquitoes, too, but we Minnesotans know how to handle 'em.

Voyageurs is more accessible but still scantly visited, largely because its greatest asset -- canoeist campgrounds -- is replicated in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area. But trips here can be equally rewarding and (like Acadia) spiked with a little French American history.

Alas, neither park can boast anything as rich as Acadia's abundance of lobster restaurants. Freshly caught walleye is a pretty good concession.

Yellowstone National Park is too magical to pass up, even in high season. The good news is that traffic flows relatively smoothly over the park's wheel-with-spokes-shaped main thoroughfare, the 142-mile Grand Loop Road. Also, visitors are spread over nine inns and 12 campgrounds, four that take reservations (1-866-439-7375).

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658