USA - hiking in the National Parks without a car

[CheeseLizard21Blue]

Hi, we would like to hike/explore National Parks in USA, but neither of us want to drive. We are looking at an HF Holidays guided walking holiday, and wondered if anyone knew of anything similar from other providers.

Thanks.

HF have an unofficial Facebook group called HF holiday fans so you could chat to people who use the company as the official HF stuff is monitored and only good reviews get published.

We used to take our kids on HF holidays in the UK and loved them.

Intrepid, Exodus, Explore Worldwide and G Adventures all do guided holidays in the western parks.

Thanks Glitterbiscuits and angelcake20, much appreciated.

HF is in the lead.

We were booked on Ramble Worldwide trip in 2019 but it was cancelled due a Phantom Ranch booking issue; sadly RW have now changed the holiday, and reduced the amount of walking a lot.

G adventure involves camping, so not for me.

Exodus mentioned a local company but when I checked that out they had been taken over by Exodus. In 2026 Exodus are only doing private departures.

https://www.intrepidtravel.com/uk/united-states/discover-southwestern-usa-166706 A possibility - includes glamping, but has private facilities.

https://www.explore.co.uk/holidays/western-usa-national-parks-explorer another possibility.

I didn't realise the distances involved, and both Intrepid and Explore warn that transport might be cramped, if it departure is popular.

Frustrating the HF trip seems to have got detatched from the feefo reviews, so I am using the unoffical Facebook page to see if any members of that FB group have done, I've tried similar in the newly introducted HF Boot Room forum.

I haven’t done a guided tour but DH and I are just back from 2 weeks in the Southwest and IMO, the distances/times your proposed tours are advertising are nuts. Eg the intrepid travel tour leaves you with next to no time in Zion, has you doing a day trip from Zion to Bryce Canyon (you’ll be travelling over two hours each way that day) and again next to no time at Bryce. It then does a crazy down to Page and then double back to Las Vegas before heading East again to the Grand Canyon! That’s nuts.

Are you dead set against renting a car? The roads (once outside Vegas) are very very easy to drive on. Our itinerary was (and I would make minor changes if we did it again as Flagstaff was a last minute addition):

Las Vegas 2 nights
Grand Canyon (via Hoover Dam and Route 66) 2 nights
Flagstaff 1 night
Monument Valley 2 nights
Page 1 night
Bryce Canyon 2 nights
Springdale 1 night
Zion (Lodge in park) 2 nights
Las Vegas 1 night

That was 21 hours driving in total

Thanks, much appreciated, hope you both had a fantastic time.

For us self drive abroad is a definite no, which is very restrictive. We did it a one way journey once due to a unexpected train strike and I was an absolute nightmare passenger. It was much less stressful for DP to return the car on his own.

Is this the HF tour you are looking at?

https://www.hfholidays.co.uk/holidays-and-tours/southwest-usa-and-grand-canyon

IMO it looks a lot better than the Intrepid Tour. It’s more travel/places than we did but still gives you a decent amount of time at the main parks. Also for Zion, they stay in Springdale which is much better than one of the towns further East of the park (and Springdale itself is in a gorgeous setting)

Came across this while googling non-driving routes for Utah since US parks without a car are an absolute nightmare logistically.

What worked for me was focusing only on parks with solid internal shuttle systems (like Zion and Bryce) and mapping the shuttle stops manually.

I used Routespunkt to drop all the trailheads, shuttle routes, and campsite points onto one canvas so I could see if the daily flow actually made sense without a vehicle. It takes a lot of manual planning, but having everything visually on a map saved me from getting stranded.

Definitely check out Intrepid Travel or G Adventures too if you want fully guided options, but DIY is doable if you stick to the parks with good shuttles.

Thank you! Much appreciated.

It is on the back burner at the moment, I just had a quick look at the HF holidays one that we did look at - I think the cost may have jumped a lot....