Summit and Spur · National Parks
Permit dates, opening days, and the routes between them: plan the park trip around the deadlines that decide it.
Pass math · LiveVisiting 3 or more parks this year? The pass probably beats the gate. Tap your parks:
Vehicle entry, one trip per park, gate fees from the parks' official fee pages. The full calculator adds per person entry, repeat trips, and parks not listed here.
Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park. Photo: National Park Service, public domain.
Most park trips do not fail at the gate. They fail months earlier, at a lodging window that opened and closed before anyone knew it existed, or on the road, in a route that crosses the same park twice in one day. This hub is Summit and Spur's working answer to both problems: routes that respect how the parks actually run, the pass math done with your own parks, and planners that put the deadlines first.
Everything here is drawn from the parks' official pages. When a fact cannot be verified, it does not ship. The guides are written as research, with sources, and the planners they point to are ours, made by Summit and Spur and sold on Gumroad. That relationship is stated plainly because it is the honest one: these pages are our own first recommendation, not an independent review.
Featured route · Yellowstone
Day 1
Mammoth & Lamar Valley
Terraces at first light, the northern road, Lamar Valley at dusk.
Base: Gardiner
Day 2
Norris & the Canyon
Norris at opening, Artist Point, Hayden Valley in the evening.
Base: Canyon / Lake
Day 3
Geyser basins
Grand Prismatic overlook, Midway boardwalk, Old Faithful twice.
Base: Old Faithful
Day 4
The lake & the way out
West Thumb, Fishing Bridge, the Mud Volcano area, then out.
Base: Onward
The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, day two on the route. Photo: National Park Service, public domain.
The flagship guide. Four days, three bases, no backtracking across the park: the north end first, then Norris and the canyon, then the geyser basins, then out along the lake. It comes with the curated map of the route, 40 pins in four layers, ready to open on your phone.
The park index
The route that does not backtrack: Mammoth and Lamar Valley, Norris and the canyon, Old Faithful and the geyser basins, then out along the lake. Includes the curated route map, 40 pins in four layers.
Fee $35/vehicleBest Jun to SepGateway Gardiner, MTUpdated Oct 2026
Read the four-day Yellowstone route
Deciding when to go? The Yellowstone Month Picker reads your month against the park's road schedule, wildlife calendar, river record and crowds.
Three days, no wasted miles: Jenny Lake and Cascade Canyon first, the valley floor at dawn and dusk, then Taggart Lake and the south end. Built around the reservation windows that decide the trip.
Fee $35/vehicleBest Jun to SepGateway Jackson, WYUpdated Oct 2026
The shuttle canyon first, Angels Landing or its honest Plan B second, the quiet east side and Kolob last. Includes the lottery windows that decide the trip.
Fee $35/vehicleBest Mar to May, Sep to OctGateway Springdale, UTUpdated Oct 2026
The central rim on foot, one honestly sized day below the rim, then Desert View and the east end, with the 2026 North Rim truth built in.
Fee $35/vehicleBest Mar to May, Sep to OctGateway Tusayan, AZUpdated Oct 2026
Ordered by altitude: the gentle Bear Lake start, Trail Ridge Road end to end, then west side water, all built around the timed entry releases that decide the trip.
Fee $35/vehicleBest Jun to SepGateway Estes Park, COUpdated Oct 2026
The free tool
At $35 a park for a vehicle pass, the answer depends on your trip, your group, and whether you are a US resident (the 2026 prices are $80 resident and $250 nonresident, with a $100 per person fee for nonresidents at the busiest parks). Add your parks and get a plain verdict with the math shown. The live strip at the top of this page runs the quick version; the full tool handles per person entry, repeat trips, and any park you can name.
Park pass holders also get our season alerts: timed entry reservation openings, road opening dates, and pass price changes for the parks on their list. Sign-up lives on the calculator page and on this page, below the planners. The same checks are published weekly on the park updates page.
From our shelf
Each planner is a workbook plus a PDF guide: the booking windows with live countdowns from your trip date, the budget with the pass breakeven run for you, an editable day planner, and a filled sample itinerary. Singles are $7.99; all five together are the $19.99 bundle.
Inside every planner: booking windows as countdowns · budget with pass breakeven · editable day planner · filled sample itinerary
The deadlines desk
Seven standing pages the desk maintains year round: the lottery calendar for the hikes that take luck as well as legs, the fallback planner for the morning the luck runs out, the rule tracker for the park whose entry rules just changed underneath the internet's advice, the road tracker for the one famous drive that opens on snow's schedule, not the calendar's, the month picker for the park that is twelve different parks in a year, the foliage tracker for the seven towns whose peak weekends are a booking problem of their own, and the Halloween towns tracker for the two October towns where the trip is won or lost by August.
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The standard
Fees, windows, and road dates are verified against National Park Service park pages and recreation.gov, and each product prints its sources. Rules in the current editions are the 2026 season's; where 2027 rules are not yet final, the pages say so instead of dressing this year's rules up as next year's fact. Confirm before booking anything nonrefundable, and treat the park's own page as the final word.