5 American Parks You'll Need to Win the Lottery to Visit

Caroline Morse Teel is the Managing Editor for SmarterTravel Media. Follow her on Instagram @TravelWithCaroline.

Caroline joined Boston-based SmarterTravel in 2011 after living in Ireland, London, and Manhattan. She's traveled to all seven continents, jumped out of planes, and bungeed off bridges in the pursuit of a good story. She loves exploring off-the-beaten path destinations, anything outdoorsy, and all things adventure.

Her stories have also appeared online at USA Today, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Boston.com, TripAdvisor, Buzzfeed, Jetsetter, Oyster, Airfarewatchdog, and others.

The Handy Item I Always Pack: "Earplugs. A good pair has saved my sleep and sanity many times!"

Ultimate Bucket List Experience: Hiking Mount Kilimanjaro.

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The odds of winning $1 on certain scratch tickets are just over 20 percent. The odds of winning a permit to visit Coyote Buttes North, home of the famous Wave? About 4 percent during peak season.

In order to keep certain parts of America’s park system from getting overrun with visitors, some parks have instituted a lottery system for entrance. Here are some of the best that are worth trying your luck at.

Coyote Buttes North Lottery

The Wave is a surreal-looking natural sandstone rock formation that undulates across the desert landscape of Coyote Buttes. In order to protect this fragile formation, only 64 people (or 16 groups, whichever comes first) are allowed to visit it each day, with 48 individual permits (and/or 12 group permits) being given away in advance in an online lottery and the remaining 16 individual permits (and/or 4 group permits) drawn during a daily lottery. The daily lottery is run virtually (instead of on a walk-in basis) and requires entrants to be within a geofenced area when applying.

Applicants must pay a nonrefundable $9 fee each time they apply (and can only enter the lottery once each month) and can choose up to three potential visitation dates per month. The lottery is run four months ahead, so if you want to visit the Wave in May, apply in January. If you win, the permit cost is $7 per person, and you’ll receive a route map with photos of landmarks and GPS coordinates to help you find your way along the 6.4-mile backcountry hike to the Wave.

Fun fact: The Wave’s popularity is partly due to its feature as desktop wallpaper on Windows 7, which gave cubicle-dwellers everywhere something to dream about while trapped at their desks.

Private Grand Canyon Rafting Trip Lottery

Want to raft down the Grand Canyon but don’t want your experience ruined by a terrible guide or annoying tour groups? Apparently, plenty of other people feel the same way, as permits for 12- to 25-day self-guided raft trips from Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek formerly had a 27-year waitlist. In 2006, the NPS decided that the insanely long waiting list would be replaced by a lottery.

This weighted lottery gives preference to those who were on the old waitlist, as well as people who have not been rafting on the Colorado River recently.

The main lottery is held once a year during the first three weeks in February, and follow-up lotteries are held throughout the year to reassign spots from any canceled trips. There is $25 fee to apply for the lottery and, for winners, a $200-$400 trip deposit, a $20 entrance fee, and $90/person river permit.

Guided Bear Viewing at McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge

In the summer, up to 144 wild brown bears a day descend on McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge to fish for the thousands of salmon that swim past during their upstream migration. Can’t bear to miss that? Enter the lottery, and you might be one of the lucky 10 people per day who are allowed to view the spectacle between June and August.

The program limits the number of people who may be present at McNeil River Falls (or the other viewing locations) to no more than ten individuals so as not to disturb the bears. If you win one of the 185 permits available each year, you’ll be allowed to camp at the campground, visit the sanctuary, and attend guided bear viewing sessions over a designated four-day period.

Half Dome Cables Lottery

A 14-mile hike seems tough enough to weed out most people, but not at Yosemite’s most famous attraction, Half Dome. Despite the fact that this incredibly hard hike involves scrambling up steep granite domes using steel cables and wooden planks as makeshift stairs to reach the summit, the hike attracts hundreds of visitors every year.

The steel cables are only up from late May to mid-October and may be taken down early or put up late due to weather conditions. During this season, only 300 daily permits (225 for day hikers and 75 for backpackers) are issued to summit Half Dome.

The lottery runs March 1 through March 31, and you designate a specific date or range of dates you would like to climb. Feeling spontaneous? A small number of permits (based on the estimated rate of under-use and cancellation of permits) are available through a daily lottery that you can enter two days before your chosen hiking date. You’ll pay $10 to enter the lottery and $10 for a permit if you’re successful.

Phantom Ranch Lottery

Phantom Ranch is one of the most exclusive accommodations in the world, and it’s not because of the cost (cabins cost $213.50 per night). Located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Phantom Ranch is only accessible by hiking or riding a mule 7.5 miles down or by rafting in via the Colorado River. The journey is worth it though, as you’ll get to spend the night in a comfortable cabin equipped with linens and ensuite bathrooms (shared showers are located in a separate building) in an unforgettable location without having to pack everything down on your back.

Due to overwhelming demand, Phantom Ranch takes reservations via a lottery system, which can be entered here. Occasionally, a few beds will open up due to cancellation, and those can be searched for here.

The lottery is held monthly between the 1st and 25th and runs 15 months ahead (so entries made in January 2021 will be for reservations in March 2022). Unlike most other lotteries, this one is free to enter.

Caroline Morse Teel is the Executive Editor at SmarterTravel. Follow her on Instagram @TravelWithCaroline.

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