Author's posts
Jun 25 2024
Isle Royale National Park
Isle Royale National Park protects a remote archipelago in the cold waters of Lake Superior, far from highways, cities, and the conventional sightseeing routes that define many American national parks. There are no roads connecting the island’s destinations, no private cars, and no quick roadside overlooks. Reaching Isle Royale requires crossing Lake Superior by ferry, …
Jun 24 2024
Indiana Dunes National Park
Indiana Dunes National Park protects one of the most biologically diverse landscapes in the National Park System along just 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline in northwestern Indiana. At first glance, the park may seem centered almost entirely on sandy beaches and towering dunes, but its relatively small footprint contains an astonishing collection of habitats: …
Jun 23 2024
Hot Springs National Park
Hot Springs National Park is unlike almost any other national park in the United States. Instead of surrounding visitors with vast wilderness far from civilization, it rises directly from the center of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where grand early 20th-century bathhouses stand beneath forested Ouachita Mountain slopes and naturally heated water still emerges from the ground …
Jun 22 2024
Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park protects one of the most dynamic landscapes on Earth, a place where molten rock continues building the island of Hawaiʻi while tropical rainforest, high-elevation shrubland, desert, lava tubes, coastal cliffs, and centuries of Native Hawaiian culture surround two of the world’s most remarkable volcanoes. The park extends from the Pacific Ocean …
Jun 21 2024
Haleakalā National Park
Haleakalā National Park protects one of the most dramatic elevation changes in the National Park System, rising from the lush Pacific coast of eastern Maui to the 10,023-foot summit of Haleakalā. Within that vertical range, visitors move through tropical coastal vegetation, rainforest, cloud forest, shrubland, high-elevation desert, volcanic cinder fields, and a summit landscape that …
Jun 19 2024
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park protects more than half a million acres of ancient Appalachian mountains, rushing streams, old-growth forest, wildflower-covered slopes, historic cabins, waterfalls, high-elevation spruce-fir forest, and some of the greatest biological diversity found anywhere in the temperate United States. Straddling the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, the park is consistently the …
Jun 18 2024
Great Sand Dunes National Park
Great Sand Dunes National Park protects a landscape that seems almost impossible: the tallest sand dunes in North America rising directly in front of the snow-covered Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The immense dunefield spreads across roughly 30 square miles of Colorado’s San Luis Valley, but the dunes are only the centerpiece of a much larger …
Jun 17 2024
Great Basin National Park
Great Basin National Park protects one of the most varied landscapes in Nevada, rising from sagebrush-covered desert valleys to the 13,063-foot summit of Wheeler Peak. Within those dramatic changes in elevation are ancient bristlecone pines, alpine lakes, limestone caves, subalpine forests, rock glaciers, high mountain ridges, clear streams, archaeological sites, and some of the darkest …
Jun 16 2024
Grand Teton National Park
Grand Teton National Park protects one of the most immediately recognizable mountain landscapes in the United States: a jagged wall of peaks rising abruptly from the broad valley of Jackson Hole in northwestern Wyoming. Unlike mountain ranges hidden behind lower foothills, the Tetons seem to erupt almost directly from the valley floor, with the 13,775-foot …
Jun 15 2024
Grand Canyon National Park
Grand Canyon National Park protects one of the most immense and recognizable landscapes on Earth, where the Colorado River has cut through layer after layer of rock to create a canyon roughly 277 river miles long, as much as 18 miles wide, and more than a mile deep in places. From the forested rims, the …
