Archive for the ‘National Parks Photo Spots’ Category
Five years back, I posted the national parks photo spot series of blog posts, each describing a favorite location in each national park. Since then, Pinnacles was designated our 59th National Park, so here is an update to the series. Pinnacles National Park, our latest, is a little-known gem that rewards with a diverse terrain […]
Kobuk Valley National Park is located in Northwestern Arctic Alaska, entirely above the Arctic Circle. It has the distinction of being the least visited of the 58 US National Parks. Following our summer 2001 trip to Lake Clark National Park, the expedition to Kobuk Valley National park in 2002 was the first wilderness trip that […]
The National Park of American Samoa is located in the South Pacific, in the Southern Hemisphere, right in the center of Polynesia, making it the most remote of the 58 National Parks. Its slightly different name (not “American Samoa National Park”) reflects on its status: The National Park of American Samoa is situated on a […]
Cuyahoga National Park preserves a small section of rural landscape along the Cuyahoga River between the two large cities of Akron and Cleveland in Ohio. Like for Black Canyon of the Gunnison, I visited Cuyahoga late because it had just been designated a National Park the year before. At first, expecting the traditional terrain of […]
Katmai National Park is located near the end of the Alaska Peninsula, in the middle of which is situated Lake Clark National Park. Although further from Anchorage than Lake Clark National Park, Katmai sees a slightly larger visitation, 9000 annual visits versus 6000, making it the fourth less visited National Park. Katmai was created in […]
Lake Clark National Park, situated on the Alaska Peninsula, does not include the superlatives of the other Alaskan parks such as highest or northernmost mountains, largest icefield or glaciers. Instead, the park preserves a supremely varied wilderness where all the geographical features of Alaska can be found in a relatively small area. Maybe because the […]
Glacier Bay National Park encompasses fifteen tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs into a vast, Y-shaped marine fjord on the Southeast coast of Alaska. Two hundred years ago, the fjord was still a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice, but it now includes plant communities ranging from mature spruce and hemlock rainforests, to thinly […]
One of the most recently designated National Parks, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park preserves the most dramatic section of the canyon of the Gunnison River in Colorado. Unlike other canyons in the Southwest which were carved into soft rock, extremely hard metamorphic rock form the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. […]
Haleakala National Park, on the island of Maui, Hawaii, like Hawaii Volcanoes National Park encompasses terrain ranging from the ocean shore to the summit of a high volcano, created by the same hot spot that generated the Big Island of Hawaii. The difference is that while the volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii exhibits […]
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is the place where the past and present volcanic island activity can be observed. It is the easiest place in the world to come close to a active volcano. The entire island was created by the Mauna Loa volcano, which now towers 13700 feet above […]