The cost of plane tickets is on the rise, thanks to spiking oil prices caused by the war in Iran.
Throw in other economic woes such as stubbornly high inflation, and you've got several good reasons to look for ways to save on travel this year.
Budget-conscious vacationers hoping to visit a U.S. national park in 2026 might want to move Death Valley to the top of the list.
The desert expanse straddling the California–Nevada border already contains the lowest, hottest, and driest points in the National Park System (and in North America, for that matter).
Now the park has earned another, arguably more enticing superlative: lowest median nightly rates for nearby accommodations.
Death Valley won that title in a new ranking released by HomeToGo, an online marketplace for vacation rentals.
To create its list of the "Top U.S. National Parks to Visit in 2026," the platform's researchers scored parks on affordable lodging, crowding, and convenient access.
Affordability was assessed using "exclusive internal HomeToGo price data," according to the report, in order to "find the median cost per night per person for vacation accommodations in the area surrounding each park during 2026."
Death Valley's median nightly rate for lodging was reportedly just $40.86.
When we searched HomeToGo's own platform for Death Valley accommodations on dates in May, the cheapest, non-campground rates we could find were in the neighborhood of $60 to $80 per night—but that's still pretty affordable.
The park's remote location likely lost the site a couple points in the convenience category. As Death Valley's website puts it, "There is no public transportation to or within the park. There is no cell phone service along most park roads. Help may be many hours away; travel prepared to self-rescue."
But Death Valley seems to have made up for any middle-of-nowhere demerits by scoring very well in the crowd management department, which was assessed by looking at park acreage vs. annual visitation.
In 2025, the more than 3 million-acre park received about a million visits, thus placing a fairly reasonable 66th on the list of most-visited national park sites. (The Blue Ridge Parkway came in first, with more than 16.5 million visits.)
Other national parks with affordable accommodations nearby
Among the most popular preserves in the system, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which got 11.5 million visits in 2025, has some of the lowest prices for lodging in its Tennessee and North Carolina gateway towns, according to HomeToGo's research, which found median nightly rates of $83.41.
Other top-ranked parks with nearby lodging rates under $100 per night, per HomeToGo, include Arizona's Petrified Forest ($92.12), Virginia's Shenandoah ($91.06), Florida's Everglades ($93.96), and South Dakota's Badlands ($72.50).
To see the full ranking of national parks based on affordability, crowds, and convenience, go to HomeToGo.com.