These 5 National Parks Are Located Close To Airports For Easy Access

As appealing as it can be to make a long drive and escape from civilization, not every U.S. national park is out in the middle of nowhere. Take Gateway National Park, for instance: It's right smack-dab in the middle of St. Louis. You could fly straight to St. Louis Lambert International Airport, catch an Uber or Lyft ride down I-70, and — if all goes well, traffic-wise — be in the park in about 15 or 20 minutes.

That game plan may not be for everyone, especially if you hope to see more of the great outdoors and less of the concrete jungle. However, even some national parks far removed from any hint of urban chaos might surprise you with how close they are (relatively speaking) to big international airports. By "close," we're talking 75 miles or less from the nearest major hub (as opposed to a smaller regional airport, where you're not likely to have as many flight options).

The five national parks covered here make for ideal side trips from the cities of Miami, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago, and Denver. Or you could just use the airports in those cities for quick access to Mother Nature, saving yourself (and the environment) almost 3,000 miles worth of gas. Just be forewarned that several places on this list are among the national parks that require reservations, so when you lock in your travel dates and book a plane ticket, you may also want to look into making a park reservation.

Forget the swimsuits of South Beach; when you land at Miami International Airport, you have Everglades National Park at your disposal. This amazing wetland and its wildlife — including American alligators, Florida panthers, and the once-endangered (still threatened) Florida manatee — are only 35 miles from the airport. If nothing else, it makes for an interesting contrast when you have vacation photos of the Wynwood Walls (Miami's colorful street art museum) followed immediately by pictures of the wide-open, marshy wilderness that is the Everglades.

The classic thing to do in the Everglades is take an airboat tour, which you can do through operators like Gator Park, Coopertown Airboats, or Everglades Safari Park. In the Shark Valley area, you can go hiking, rent a bike, or take a tram tour along a 15-mile loop road. Providing a panoramic view from 70 feet up, the Shark Valley Observation Tower is the highest point accessible on foot in Everglades National Park.

Miami International Airport earns bonus points here since it actually provides easy access to two national parks. If you go south instead of west — heading down Florida's Turnpike — Biscayne National Park is roughly the same distance from the airport as the Everglades. The catch is that all but 5% of Biscayne is on the water (or underwater). If you don't mind switching up transportation modes, you could potentially fly to the next place on this list and then visit these two Florida national parks on a scenic Amtrak train.

Just 55 miles from Dulles International Airport, in the town of Front Royal, Virginia, is the northern entrance of Shenandoah National Park. Dulles is the same airport you would use to access the nation's capital — Washington, D.C. If you rent a car at the airport, you can take a scenic drive through a national park on this gorgeous road trip route.

Skyline Drive offers a winding, 35-mph journey through the Blue Ridge Mountains, where you can see picturesque views from any number of overlooks along the way. Even if you don't stop the car, nature may urge you to slow down as you encounter the occasional deer or black bear crossing the road. In Shenandoah National Park, you can also hike the Appalachian Trail and see beautiful waterfalls like Dark Hollow Falls.

The park is especially lovely from September to November when it becomes a go-to destination for fall color viewing. To see it without driving, you can join up with a tour group like Golden Bus Tours for a day trip out of the capital, while Jupiter Legend puts small groups in a vehicle driven by a professional guide. These tours include both Skyline Drive and the Luray Caverns, an impressive national natural landmark just outside Shenandoah National Park. With ceilings that reach as high as 10 stories, it's the biggest cavern in the eastern United States. When you've seen enough national monuments and memorials in D.C. and are ready to reconnect with nature, Shenandoah is the answer.

Cleveland Hopkins may sound like the name of a musician in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but it's really Ohio's busiest airport. Located just 12 miles from downtown Cleveland, the airport is named for its founder, William R. Hopkins. More importantly, in the context of national parks, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport is only 22.5 miles from Cuyahoga Valley. This gorgeous national park — the only one in the Buckeye State — could clear your head of noise after you've had a perfect trip to Cleveland's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The star attraction in Cuyahoga Valley National Park is Brandywine Falls, a 60-foot waterfall that cascades down into a gorge carved by Brandywine Creek, a tributary of the Cuyahoga River. Open for visitation from sunrise to sunset, the waterfall has a boardwalk looking out over it, and you can hike around it via the 1.5-mile Brandywine Gorge Loop. For the best experience, arrive early before the crowds roll in or stay late after they've thinned out via the nearby parking area and the road to Cleveland.

On the Ledges Trail, you can hike stone stairs up through mossy rock formations to an Instagrammable overlook. Like Shenandoah National Park, Cuyahoga Valley is picture-perfect in autumn. And like the airport in St. Louis, Cleveland Hopkins can be used to connect to the Dakotas and explore more of the Midwest's underrated national parks. Meanwhile, the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad runs all the way to Akron, offering dining excursions and even murder mystery entertainment on a vintage train.

Chicago has two major international airports — O'Hare and Midway — and they're each notorious for flight delays, not all of which are weather-related. In the not-too-distant past, they've even ranked separately as the worst airport in the U.S., so keep your expectations low when flying in. On the bright side, depending on which interstate you take, both of these airports are within a 60-mile drive of Indiana Dunes National Park. Midway is the closer of the two, with the route along I-90 being just 43 miles from the west beach of Indiana Dunes — where you can enjoy a rare bit of swimming in a national park.

Together with New Mexico's White Sands and West Virginia's New River Gorge, Indiana Dunes is one of America's newest national parks. For over 50 years, it was classified as a national lakeshore, but in 2019, it became Indiana's first-ever national park. The shore in question is Lake Michigan, which is surrounded by four U.S. states.

From UFOs to mothman sightings, the urban legends involving this lake have inspired more than one episode of "Unsolved Mysteries." During the day, while picnicking in Indiana Dunes, you might have to settle for the sight of a simple, down-to-earth horseback rider on the equestrian Glenwood Dunes Trails. Just outside the park, at Miller's Marine Center, you can rent kayaks, canoes, and fishing boats for adventures on the lake. The Calumet Dunes Trail offers a leisurely, half-mile hike along a ridge that was once the lake's shoreline some 12,000 years ago.

Denver International Airport, like Dulles and O'Hare, truly lives up to its name as one of the busiest connecting hubs for international flights in the U.S. It has also inspired a vast web of Denver Airport conspiracy theories, proving the skies over Lake Michigan aren't alone in their power over the human imagination. For a breath of fresh air without mothmen or metropolitan buildings, you can use this airport as a gateway to one of America's most-visited national parks. Rocky Mountain National Park is around 74 miles away, but you can reach it even without a car thanks to the Estes Park Shuttle, which makes round-trips from the airport to the park's doorstep multiple times a day.

Rocky Mountain National Park has five different campgrounds where you can pitch a tent for the night. In this park, you can enjoy postcard views of pleasant meadows, alpine lakes, and even arctic tundra. The trails around Bear Lake, Emerald Lake, and Sprague Lake are all popular for hiking. Trail Ridge Road — which stretches 48 miles from Estes Park to Grand Lake — will take you up over the tops of the trees, with the temperature dropping to 30 degrees Fahrenheit as you gain elevation. Here and elsewhere, the landscapes are undeniably scenic, but according to the National Park Service, "it's no surprise that wildlife watching is rated the number-one activity by a vast majority of Rocky's three million annual visitors." Elk, moose, and bighorn sheep are among the free-roaming animals you might see inside this unparalleled national park.