Jan 01 2025
Simien Mountains National Park protects one of Africa’s most dramatic mountain landscapes: an immense highland world of sheer escarpments, knife-edged ridges, deep valleys, isolated volcanic pinnacles, grassy plateaus, waterfalls, Afro-alpine vegetation, and wildlife found almost nowhere else on Earth. Located in the Amhara Region of northern Ethiopia, the park forms part of the Ethiopian Highlands …
Oct 05 2024
The world’s greatest national parks protect far more than beautiful scenery. They preserve entire ecosystems, migration routes, ancient forests, glaciers, coral reefs, volcanic landscapes, rare wildlife, archaeological sites, and places with deep cultural importance to the people who have lived there for generations. Ranking them is inevitably subjective. A wildlife enthusiast might choose Serengeti or …
Oct 05 2024
Galápagos National Park protects one of the most remarkable natural environments on Earth. Located roughly 1,000 kilometers west of mainland Ecuador in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the Galápagos Islands are famous for giant tortoises, marine iguanas, penguins, flightless cormorants, Darwin’s finches, sea lions, blue-footed boobies, and dozens of other species that evolved in long isolation …
Oct 01 2024
Torres del Paine National Park protects one of the most dramatic mountain landscapes in South America. Located in southern Chilean Patagonia, the park combines jagged granite towers, turquoise lakes, immense glaciers, windswept grasslands, Magellanic forest, fast-flowing rivers, waterfalls, and broad valleys beneath some of the most unpredictable weather on the continent. The park is named …
Oct 01 2024
Bridalveil Fall is one of the signature waterfalls of Yosemite National Park and one of the first major landmarks many travelers see as they enter Yosemite Valley. Dropping 620 feet from a hanging valley high above the valley floor, the waterfall appears almost suspended against a wall of pale granite. Unlike many seasonal Yosemite waterfalls, …
Sep 28 2024
North Cascades National Park protects one of the wildest mountain landscapes in the contiguous United States, and its wildlife reflects that ruggedness. Black bears forage in forests and avalanche chutes, mountain goats traverse cliffs that appear almost impossible to climb, hoary marmots whistle from subalpine meadows, and pikas disappear among high-elevation talus slopes. Some of …
Sep 25 2024
Serengeti National Park is one of the world’s great wildlife landscapes, an immense expanse of grasslands, acacia woodlands, rocky kopjes, seasonal rivers, and open horizons in northern Tanzania. It is best known as the heart of the Great Migration, when enormous herds of wildebeest, zebras, and gazelles move through the wider Serengeti ecosystem in search …
Sep 21 2024
Mesa Verde National Park preserves one of the most extraordinary collections of ancestral Pueblo architecture in North America. Built into sandstone alcoves high above the canyon floors of southwestern Colorado, its cliff dwellings contain stone rooms, towers, plazas, storage chambers, and circular ceremonial spaces constructed by people whose communities flourished in the Mesa Verde region …
Sep 18 2024
Hot Springs National Park is unlike almost any other national park in the United States. Instead of surrounding a remote mountain range, canyon, or wilderness, the park rises directly from the center of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where historic bathhouses line the city’s main street and naturally heated spring water still flows from the slopes of …
Sep 17 2024
Watching sunrise from Haleakalā is one of Maui’s most famous experiences. Long before daylight reaches the beaches below, visitors climb more than 10,000 feet into the Summit District of Haleakalā National Park, where the first light of morning spreads across volcanic ridges, cinder cones, clouds, and the Pacific Ocean. On a clear morning, the experience …
