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Be an outsider. It's time for the latest in National Park News. Well, the National Park Service's full report on 2021 visitation isn't quite out yet.

But we do have some numbers available and some of them are staggering.

Yellowstone had nearly 4.9 million visitors last year, besting the 2016 record by over 600,000 visits. Visitation for May, June, July, August, and September were the busiest on record.

July was the first time visitation exceeded 1 million visits in a single month.

At Big Bend, the wide open spaces of West Texas lured a record 581,000 visitors,

a 25% increase over 2019, and a 49% increase over 2016 five years ago.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is the most visited park in the system by double,

saw its busiest year to date with 14,137,812 visits.

That's more than 1.5 million visits over the record set in 2019.

And before people ask in the comments,

no that does not include people just passing through the park.

Where possible, some parks are working on projects that will help easy effects of this explosion and national park enthusiasm

which has been ramping up since well before the pandemic.

Yellowstone for instance has completed over $100 million in projects

over the past two years to improve transportation infrastructure and reduce traffic

congestion. We've been telling you for over a year now that the increase in visitors to parks is going to end much of the available first come first served campgrounds.

Yellowstone's 12 campgrounds are now all reservation only.

And Hot Springs National Park just announced

...