May 26 2025
Death Valley National Park is a landscape of extremes. Here, salt flats sink below sea level while mountains rise more than 11,000 feet above the desert. Sand dunes spread across broad valleys, colorful badlands glow at sunrise, volcanic craters interrupt the northern desert, and mysterious rocks leave tracks across an isolated dry lakebed. The park …
May 25 2025
Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America and one of the defining landscapes of Death Valley National Park. At 282 feet below sea level, the basin spreads across the floor of Death Valley in an immense expanse of salt, mud, mineral crust, and temporary pools framed by some of the park’s highest mountains. …
May 10 2025
Kings Canyon National Park Kings Canyon National Park protects some of the most dramatic landscapes in California’s Sierra Nevada, from enormous giant sequoia groves to a glacial canyon deeper than many of the better-known canyons of the American West. Located immediately north of Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon combines towering granite walls, rushing rivers, alpine …
Apr 26 2025
Hot springs have drawn people to mineral-rich waters for thousands of years, whether for bathing, relaxation, cultural traditions, or simple curiosity about the geothermal processes occurring beneath Earth’s surface. Within the U.S. national park system, hot springs range from carefully managed historic bathhouses to remote desert soaking pools and spectacular thermal basins where the water …
Apr 20 2025
Staying inside Yellowstone National Park changes the entire experience. Instead of beginning and ending each day with a long drive from a gateway town, you can wake within walking distance of geysers, Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, wildlife habitat, and some of the park’s most famous trails. Yellowstone currently has nine lodging …
Apr 17 2025
Yellowstone National Park is famous for geysers, bison, wolves, waterfalls, and geothermal landscapes, but from late spring through summer another transformation takes place across the park. Meadows turn yellow with arrowleaf balsamroot, lupines bring swaths of blue and purple to open slopes, red and orange paintbrush grows along trails, glacier lilies emerge beside melting snow, …
Apr 16 2025
Zion National Park is one of the great landscapes of the American Southwest, a place where the Virgin River cuts through towering walls of Navajo Sandstone to create narrow slot canyons, hanging gardens, desert waterfalls, forested plateaus, and some of the most recognizable hiking routes in the National Park System. Located in southwestern Utah, Zion …
Apr 09 2025
Tuolumne Meadows is one of the most beautiful places in Yosemite National Park and one of the largest high-elevation meadows in the Sierra Nevada. At roughly 8,600 feet above sea level, this broad subalpine landscape is crossed by the winding Tuolumne River and surrounded by granite domes, lodgepole pine forests, alpine lakes, glacially carved peaks, …
Jan 01 2025
Bale Mountains National Park protects one of Africa’s most extraordinary mountain landscapes: a vast highland wilderness of Afro-alpine moorland, volcanic peaks, glacial lakes, grasslands, bamboo forest, cloud forest, deep river valleys, and some of the rarest animals on Earth. Located in the Oromia Region of southeastern Ethiopia, the park rises from lush Harenna Forest to …
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 …
