Travel guide ranks all 63 national parks and Shenandoah ranks #1

In preparation for National Parks Week, which begins on April 20th, online travel guide Travel Lemming ranked all 63 national parks in the United States and gave some rather surprising rankings.

Travel guide rankings are created purely based on data, so while you may disagree with the ranking of your favorite or least favorite parks, they are not based on the opinions of editors or writers. Please note that this is not the case. Data were collected and analyzed for seven distinct categories. Crowds, reviews, weather, affordability, jobs, accessibility, biodiversity.

Naturally, crowds are based on the number of people visiting each park (per acre) in 2023, and reviews are based on the average rating left by visitors. Weather is based on how a set of weather factors affects visitor comfort, and affordable prices cover the visitor's total expenditure. Jobs takes into account the total number of jobs associated with a park, biodiversity influences the number of species, and accessibility focuses on distance to the nearest airport.

Without further rambling, here are Travel Lemming's top 10 national parks.

1. shenandoah national park,Virginia
2. Joshua Tree National Parkcalifornia
3. olympic national park, Washington
4. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
5. north cascades national park, Washington
6. grand canyon national park, arizona
7. channel islands national park, California
8. new river gorge national park, west virginia
9. everglades national park, florida
10. redwood national and state parks; California

For personal reasons, I'm a little upset that Acadia National Park is ranked #2. 41, but I feel like I understand. I think the biggest surprise throughout the complete list, which you can see here, was that Yellowstone was his #16 and Yosemite was his #22. But again, this is a ranking based on data, so I think we have to accept it.