The Best Black Friday Deal Is Free National And State Park Admission

Unsplash

Forget shopping, the best Black Friday deal is free national and state park admission. The experience you’ll get is the complete opposite of what you’ll find at crowded department stores, not to mention the stampedes. You’ll probably do all your shopping on Cyber Monday anyway, so why not get outside for free?!

The National Park Service is waiving entrance fees to the country’s best nature areas on Friday, and 16 state park systems are following suit. It’s a part of REI’s #optoutside campaign (the company’s stores are all closed on Black Friday).

REI designed a search program to help anti-shoppers find the closest and best park for them. The company made the search function super Instagram-friendly, so get ready to snap some pics. REI’s point is simple: it’s a lot easier to get to a national or state park than you might think.

Portland and Seattle residents can hit Olympic National Park, or go to the Cascades. The area is a gold mine of nature.


And if you’re in one of the four corners states, you gotta take advantage of this deal. You have the Grand Canyon right there, as well as Arches, Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde national parks. Just choose the one closest to you.


Live in LA? Joshua Tree or Death Valley is calling. Or if you want to really go for it, the Grand Canyon is technically within driving distance.


San Franciscans, you have no excuse for not heading to Muir Woods. It’s right there! Yosemite is also pretty darn close.

A post shared by Andriy (@hungrysportster) on


Even all you New Yorkers out there glancing enviously at the California park list, you too can swap nature for the mall. Try Bear Mountain, which is only a short ride up the Metro North.

And let’s be real. If you want to hit up the sales at stores, you’ll be rising at the crack of dawn. So you can definitely set an early-bird alarm to get out on the road to a park around the same time the doorbuster deals start at the mall.