How many days should I allow for several national park visits?

I am trying to plan a summer vacation that would include stops at Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park. How many days should I plan on being in each area so as to have a good overview, sut still being able to fit everything into the trip.

How much time you want to spend at each location really depends on what sort of things you are interested in seeing and doing.

There is really not that much to do at Mount Rushmore… you stand at the viewing area and look up at the cliff with the faces carved on it. There is also a small museum and gift shop. It is an impressive sight and worth visiting if you are in the area, but it is hard to imagine spending more than a few hours there. The surrounding area has a variety of tourist attractions including the old west boomtown of Deadwood (mostly gambling casinos now), Sturgis (popular with motorcyclists), several developed caves, and a number of other – often cheesy – tourist attractions. These other attractions can be fun if you are in the area, but they are not exactly world class attractions.

Both Yellowstone and Glacier are huge parks. Just going to the main overlooks, visitor centers and attractions (without doing any serious hiking or camping) could easily take several days at each park. There is a big 60 mile loop through the center of Yellowstone that runs past most of the main lake and thermal areas. You could probably do the loop with stops at the main locations in two days, but three or four would be better.

At Glacier, you could easily spend a day exploring the Many Glacier area and another around Two Medicine Lake and East Glacier. From there you could take a day going over the classic ‘Going to the Sun Road’ to the west side of the park with stops at Saint Mary Lake, Logan Pass and other attractions along the way. You could then easily spend another day on the west side of the park at Apgar and Lake McDonald. The Waterton Lake area on the border with Canada and the US is also very nice with another big classic lodge and nice boat tour (this would add at least an extra day to the time on the east side of the park).

Keep in mind too that all of these parks are pretty far away from each other. You would need a full day of long driving to get between any two of them.