Every year around January I hit the same wall. The holiday excitement is gone. The days are short. Everything outside is grey and frozen and miserable. And I start scrolling through old photos from warm places, which is a dangerous activity when you have a credit card and access to flight search engines.
Parks Featured in This Guide
8 parks mapped — click a pin for details
The good news is that the national park system has you covered. Some of America’s best parks are at their absolute peak during winter months, offering warm temperatures, sunshine, and the kind of scenery that makes you forget you own a snow shovel.
I’ve visited all nine of these parks, most of them during winter specifically, and I’ve ranked them based on three factors that matter when you’re trying to escape the cold.
How I Ranked These Parks
Three things determine whether a park is a good winter escape or just a warm place to stand around.
Warmth and sunshine. The whole point is escaping winter. Average winter highs, sunshine hours, and overall comfort level are the primary factors. If I still need a jacket, it’s not a real escape.
Things to do. Some parks close facilities seasonally, limit access, or simply don’t offer much during winter months. The best winter parks are fully operational and give you plenty to fill your days.
Accessibility and cost. A tropical paradise that costs $2,000 just to reach is a harder sell than one you can drive to from a major airport. Getting there matters.
9. National Park of American Samoa
Let’s start with the most remote national park in the system. American Samoa sits in the South Pacific about 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii. The park spans three volcanic islands and protects some of the most pristine tropical rainforest and coral reefs in the Pacific.
Winter temperatures here hover in the mid-80s with warm ocean water perfect for snorkeling. The beaches are empty by mainland standards. The rainforest trails through the park feel like something out of a nature documentary, with fruit bats the size of small dogs (Samoan flying foxes, and they’re incredible) hanging from the trees overhead.
So why is it ranked last? Two reasons. First, getting there costs between $1,200 and $2,500 per person for flights, and the routing is complicated. You’ll fly through Honolulu and then catch a flight to Pago Pago. Second, winter is actually the wet season in American Samoa, with average rainfall of about 10-12 inches per month. You’ll get sun, but you’ll also get tropical downpours. Bring a rain jacket and a flexible attitude.
If money and logistics aren’t obstacles, this park is otherworldly. But for most folks planning a winter escape, there are better options that don’t require two days of travel to reach.
8. Dry Tortugas National Park
Dry Tortugas is 70 miles west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. To get there you either take a 2.5-hour ferry ride or a 45-minute seaplane, both of which are experiences in themselves. There are no roads, no bridges, and no cell service. Just Fort Jefferson, some of the best snorkeling in North America, and a whole lot of blue water.
Winter temperatures are perfect here. Highs in the mid-70s, water temperatures around 72-74 degrees, and sunshine that feels like a reward for surviving December. The snorkeling around the fort’s moat wall is some of the clearest water I’ve encountered in the continental United States. Visibility routinely exceeds 60 feet. You’ll see sea turtles, nurse sharks, barracuda, and tropical fish in colors that seem unreasonable.
Fort Jefferson itself is fascinating. It’s a massive 19th-century brick fortress that was never finished, served as a Civil War prison, and now sits in the middle of the ocean looking like something a screenwriter would invent. The history alone is worth the trip.
The catch is access. Ferry tickets (about $200 per person round trip) book out 4-6 months in advance during winter. The seaplane is faster but costs roughly $350 per person. Camping is limited to 8-10 sites and fills up just as quickly. You need to plan this one early or you won’t get there at all.
7. Biscayne National Park
Biscayne National Park is 95% water, which makes it one of the most unique parks in the system and one that most folks have never heard of despite being 30 minutes from downtown Miami. Winter highs average around 75 degrees with low humidity and clear skies, which is basically the opposite of Miami in summer.
The park protects a stretch of Biscayne Bay, the northernmost coral reef in the continental United States, and a chain of barrier islands with mangrove shorelines. Snorkeling and kayaking are the main activities, and winter is actually the best time for both. The water is calmer, the visibility is better, and the jellyfish population thins out compared to summer.
The Maritime Heritage Trail lets you snorkel over six shipwrecks scattered across the reef. Swimming over a 19th-century schooner in crystal-clear water while tropical fish dart around the wreckage is a surreal experience. You’ll need to book a boat tour through the park’s concession or bring your own vessel, as there’s no way to reach most of the park by land.
Biscayne ranks seventh because the park experience depends heavily on water activities. If you’re not comfortable snorkeling or kayaking, your options are limited. But if you are, this is an incredible winter escape that’s shockingly easy to reach.
6. Everglades National Park
Winter is not just a good time to visit the Everglades. It’s THE time to visit the Everglades. Summer here is brutal. We’re talking 95-degree heat, 100% humidity, and mosquito swarms dense enough to show up on weather radar. I’m not kidding about that last part.
Winter flips the script entirely. Temperatures drop to the mid-70s. Humidity becomes manageable. The mosquitoes retreat to whatever hellish dimension they come from. And because it’s the dry season, wildlife concentrates around the remaining water sources, making animal sightings almost guaranteed.
The Anhinga Trail at Royal Palm is the best wildlife viewing boardwalk I’ve been on in any national park. Alligators everywhere. Anhingas drying their wings. Great blue herons standing perfectly still before striking with startling speed. I counted 23 alligators in a single 1-mile walk in January. You won’t need binoculars. Some of them are close enough to make you reconsider your position on the boardwalk.
Kayaking through the mangrove tunnels at Nine Mile Pond or Hell’s Bay is an experience you can’t get anywhere else in the park system. The canopy closes overhead, the water goes mirror-still, and the only sound is your paddle. It’s meditative in a way that surprises people who come expecting nothing but swamp.
Shark Valley’s 15-mile bike loop and the tram ride to the observation tower are also winter highlights. You’ll see gators sunning themselves on the bike path itself. Give them a wide berth and keep moving.
5. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
It’s Hawaii. In winter. I shouldn’t have to sell this very hard.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park sits on the Big Island and protects some of the most dynamic geology on Earth. The park encompasses two active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, and the landscape ranges from tropical rainforest to barren lava fields to volcanic craters that look like they belong on another planet.
Winter temperatures along the coast are in the upper 70s to low 80s. At the summit area (about 4,000 feet), expect highs in the 60s with cool, misty conditions. The contrast between the warm, sunny coast and the cool, fog-shrouded caldera is one of the park’s most distinctive features.
Kilauea has been intermittently active in recent years, and if you time your visit during an eruption (check the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website), watching molten lava glow against the night sky from the Jaggar Museum overlook area is a top-5 national park experience. Nothing else in the system compares to watching the earth literally create new land in front of you.
Even without active lava, the Chain of Craters Road descends 3,700 feet over 19 miles from the summit to the coast, passing old lava flows, steam vents, and petroglyphs along the way. Thurston Lava Tube is a 500-foot walk through a former underground river of molten rock. The Devastation Trail crosses a landscape that looks post-apocalyptic, with bleached tree skeletons standing in fields of cinder.
Why not higher? Getting to the Big Island is a flight (roughly $400-800 from the mainland) plus a 45-minute drive from Kona or Hilo. And while the volcanic scenery is incredible, the park doesn’t offer the traditional beach-and-sunshine winter escape that most folks are looking for. For that, you’ll want to combine your park visit with time on the island’s beaches, which isn’t a bad plan at all.
4. Saguaro National Park
Saguaro National Park flanks Tucson, Arizona on two sides and protects the largest concentration of saguaro cacti on Earth. These are the iconic cacti of the American West, the ones that look like they’re waving at you, and some of them stand over 40 feet tall and are 150-200 years old.
Winter is the ideal season here. Summer temperatures in Tucson regularly hit 100-110 degrees, which makes hiking anything longer than a quarter mile genuinely dangerous. Winter highs sit in the comfortable mid-60s with abundant sunshine and dry air. You can hike all day without overheating, which opens up trails that are essentially off-limits from June through September.
The sunsets alone are worth the trip. Something about the combination of desert dust, low winter sun angle, and the silhouettes of thousands of saguaros creates sunsets that stretch across the entire sky. Deep oranges, purples, and pinks that last for 30-40 minutes. I’ve shot sunsets in 30+ national parks and Saguaro’s are consistently in the top three for pure color saturation.
The Rincon Mountain District (east side) has more rugged terrain and backcountry hiking. The Tucson Mountain District (west side) has the densest saguaro forests and the better sunset views. Both have excellent scenic drives. I’d spend a morning in the east district hiking and an evening in the west district watching the sky catch fire.
The big advantage of Saguaro is accessibility. Tucson has a major airport with direct flights from most cities, and the park is a 15-minute drive from downtown. No ferries, no island-hopping, no expensive flights to remote locations. Just book a flight, rent a car, and you’re standing among giant cacti by lunchtime.
3. Haleakala National Park
Haleakala on Maui is one of those parks that makes you question whether you’re still on Earth. The summit area, at 10,023 feet, sits above the cloud layer and offers views into a massive volcanic crater that stretches 7 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 2,600 feet deep. The colors inside the crater range from red to purple to silver to black, and the cinder cones dotting the floor look like they were placed there by a set designer.
The sunrise from the summit is one of the most famous in the world, and having done it, I can say it earned that reputation. Watching the light fill the crater while you stand in 30-degree air above the clouds is an almost spiritual experience. You need a reservation (book them through Recreation.gov) and you need to be at the summit by about 5:30am, which means leaving your hotel around 3:30am. It’s worth the lost sleep.
Winter temperatures on Maui’s coast are in the low 80s. Perfect. At the summit you’ll need serious layers as temperatures can drop below freezing with strong winds. The park essentially gives you two climate zones in one visit. Summit for the otherworldly volcanic landscape, coast for the tropical warmth.
The Kipahulu section of the park, on Maui’s remote southeast coast, protects the Pools of Oheo (formerly called the Seven Sacred Pools) and the Pipiwai Trail to 400-foot Waimoku Falls. The bamboo forest section of that trail, where massive bamboo stalks tower overhead and creak in the wind, is one of my favorite half-miles of trail in any park. The drive to Kipahulu on the Hana Highway is an adventure in itself, with 620 curves and 59 bridges over about 50 miles.
Winter is also whale season in Maui. Humpback whales migrate to the warm waters between December and April, and you can often see them breaching from the coastal sections of the park. Combining whale watching with a Haleakala sunrise and a hike through a bamboo forest makes for one of the best single days in any national park.
2. Death Valley National Park
Death Valley holds the record for the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth: 134 degrees Fahrenheit, in July 1913. Summer temperatures routinely exceed 120 degrees. Hiking is not recommended. Existing is barely recommended.
Winter changes everything. Average highs in December through February sit in the mid-60s to low 70s, which is absolutely perfect for exploring the largest national park in the contiguous United States. At 3.4 million acres, Death Valley is bigger than Connecticut, and the diversity of landscapes is staggering. Salt flats, sand dunes, slot canyons, volcanic craters, ghost towns, and mountain ranges topping 11,000 feet, all within a single park.
Badwater Basin, at 282 feet below sea level, is the lowest point in North America. Walking out onto the salt flat in winter, when the light is soft and the temperature is comfortable, is surreal. The white salt extends to the horizon in every direction. The silence is absolute. I stood there on a January afternoon and the only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat.
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are best at sunrise or sunset when the low-angle light creates dramatic shadows across the rippled sand. Winter light is especially good here because the sun stays low longer, extending that golden hour into something more like a golden two hours. Artists Palette, where volcanic minerals paint the hillsides in greens, pinks, and purples, is best in the afternoon light of a winter day.
Zabriskie Point at sunrise, with the eroded badlands glowing golden below you, is one of the most photographed scenes in the American West. Dante’s View, 5,475 feet above Badwater Basin, gives you a god’s-eye perspective of the entire valley. On a clear winter day you can see both the lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States (Badwater Basin and Mount Whitney) from the same overlook.
Death Valley ranks second because the accessibility is excellent (it’s about 2 hours from Las Vegas and 4.5 hours from Los Angeles), the winter weather is ideal, and the sheer variety of things to see and do is unmatched. If you’ve never been, a winter visit will change everything you thought you knew about the desert.
1. Virgin Islands National Park
Nothing says “forget that winter exists” quite like Virgin Islands National Park. This park covers about two-thirds of the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands and it is, without exaggeration, the most beautiful beach destination in the national park system.
Winter highs are in the mid-80s. Water temperature stays around 79-81 degrees. Rainfall is at its lowest. Trade winds keep things comfortable. It’s the definition of a winter escape.
Trunk Bay is regularly ranked among the best beaches in the world and it earned that ranking. The white sand, the turquoise water, the underwater snorkeling trail with interpretive signs mounted on the seafloor, the backdrop of green hills, it’s absurd. I’ve been to beaches across the Caribbean and Mediterranean and Trunk Bay holds its own against all of them.
But the park goes far beyond Trunk Bay. Cinnamon Bay has the best camping in the park, with tent and cottage options right on the beach. Hawksnest Bay is the local favorite, less crowded and equally beautiful. Maho Bay is where you go to swim with sea turtles, and I mean actually swim alongside them as they graze on the sea grass beds just offshore. I’ve been in the water at Maho and had three green sea turtles within 15 feet of me, completely unbothered by my presence.
Waterlemon Cay requires a short swim or kayak to reach but rewards you with some of the best snorkeling in the Caribbean. The coral is healthy, the fish diversity is remarkable, and the absence of crowds (most folks don’t want to make the swim) means you’ll likely have the reef to yourself.
Beyond the beaches, the park has over 20 miles of hiking trails, including the Reef Bay Trail with its ancient Taino petroglyphs and sugar mill ruins. The Annaberg Plantation ruins offer a sobering but important look at the island’s colonial history. The Ram Head Trail takes you to a rocky promontory at the island’s southeast tip with 360-degree ocean views.
Getting to St. John requires a flight to St. Thomas followed by a 20-minute ferry ride from Red Hook. It’s not as simple as driving to a mainland park, but it’s dramatically easier than reaching American Samoa or even Dry Tortugas. Flights to St. Thomas from the East Coast run $300-500 round trip in winter, and no passport is required since it’s a U.S. territory.
Warm beaches, world-class snorkeling, manageable crowds (winter is busy season but the island absorbs it well), rich history, good hiking, and an overall vibe that makes you forget whatever was stressing you out. Virgin Islands takes the top spot because it delivers the most complete winter escape in the park system.
The Rankings at a Glance
- Virgin Islands National Park – The complete package. Beaches, snorkeling, hiking, history, and 85-degree perfection.
- Death Valley National Park – The winter transformation is remarkable. Accessible, vast, and endlessly photogenic.
- Haleakala National Park – Sunrise above the clouds, bamboo forests, whale watching. Maui delivers.
- Saguaro National Park – Easy to reach, perfect hiking weather, and the best sunsets in the park system.
- Hawaii Volcanoes National Park – Active geology unlike anything else. Combine with Big Island beaches.
- Everglades National Park – Winter is the only time to go. Wildlife everywhere, mosquitoes nowhere.
- Biscayne National Park – Underrated gem near Miami. Shipwreck snorkeling in clear winter water.
- Dry Tortugas National Park – Fort Jefferson and incredible snorkeling. Book your ferry 6 months out.
- National Park of American Samoa – Otherworldly but expensive and remote. Worth it if you can swing it.
A Few Winter Planning Tips
Winter is peak season for most of these parks, which means accommodations book up fast. For Virgin Islands, Death Valley, and the Hawaii parks, book lodging 3-6 months in advance. Campgrounds fill up just as quickly.
Flights to island destinations are cheapest if you book 6-8 weeks in advance and avoid holiday weekends. January after New Year’s through mid-March tends to be the sweet spot for both pricing and weather.
Don’t forget that even “warm” parks can have cool mornings and evenings. Death Valley and Saguaro can dip into the 40s at night. Bring a light jacket and layers even if the forecast says 70 degrees.
And if you’re looking to explore more parks year-round, the America the Beautiful Pass ($80) gets you into all 63 national parks plus hundreds of other federal recreation sites. If you’re visiting more than two parks in a year, it pays for itself immediately.
Frequently Asked Questions About Biscayne National Park
When is the best time to visit Biscayne?
The best time to visit Biscayne National Park is December through April. Conditions vary significantly by season, so plan accordingly and check current conditions before your trip.
How much does it cost to enter Biscayne National Park?
The entrance fee for Biscayne National Park is Free per vehicle (valid for 7 days). An America the Beautiful Annual Pass ($80) covers entrance to all 63 national parks and 2,000+ federal recreation sites.
What is Biscayne known for?
Biscayne National Park is known for Coral reef snorkeling and diving, Mangrove shoreline, Maritime heritage and shipwrecks, and Undeveloped barrier islands. The park spans 172,971 acres and was established in 1980.
What are the best things to do at Biscayne National Park?
The top activities at Biscayne include Snorkeling, Scuba diving, Kayaking, Boating, Wildlife watching, and Fishing. Check our Biscayne guide for detailed recommendations.
Where is Biscayne National Park located?
Biscayne National Park is located in Florida. Visit our complete Biscayne guide for directions, nearby airports, and getting-there tips.
