Sep 24 2024
Mount Rainier National Park is one of the finest places in the Pacific Northwest to see summer wildflowers. Each year, as deep mountain snow finally retreats, subalpine meadows burst into color beneath the enormous glacier-covered volcano. Lupines, paintbrush, avalanche lilies, bistort, asters, monkeyflowers, and dozens of other species transform slopes that may have been buried …
Sep 24 2024
Mount Rainier National Park is filled with waterfalls created by one of the most water-rich mountain landscapes in the Pacific Northwest. Snowfields, glaciers, heavy winter snowfall, mountain streams, and steep volcanic terrain combine to send water cascading from cliffs and racing through forested gorges throughout the park. Some waterfalls are remarkably easy to reach. Christine …
Sep 24 2024
The Skyline Trail is one of the signature hikes in Mount Rainier National Park. Beginning at Paradise, the route climbs through famous wildflower meadows toward Panorama Point, where sweeping views extend across glaciers, valleys, and several of the great volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest. The trail is not particularly long, but it is steep enough …
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 21 2024
Spruce Tree House is one of the best-preserved and most impressive cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park. Built beneath a massive sandstone alcove on Chapin Mesa, the ancestral Pueblo village contains roughly 130 rooms and eight kivas, with sections rising several stories high. Archaeologists estimate that approximately 60 to 80 people may have lived …
Sep 21 2024
Mesa Verde National Park is famous for Cliff Palace, Balcony House, and its extraordinary Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings, but some of the best experiences in the park happen on foot. Nearly 30 miles of designated trails cross mesa tops, descend into shady canyons, follow historic roads, pass ancient farming features, and reach viewpoints overlooking both …
Sep 21 2024
Balcony House is one of the most memorable cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park. Tucked beneath a sandstone overhang high above Soda Canyon, this Ancestral Pueblo village contains 38 rooms, two kivas, remarkably preserved architectural features, and some of the most dramatic access of any site open to visitors in the park. Reaching Balcony …
Sep 21 2024
Cliff Palace is the largest known cliff dwelling in North America and the most famous archaeological site in Mesa Verde National Park. Built beneath an enormous sandstone alcove in southwestern Colorado, the village contains roughly 150 rooms, 23 kivas, towers, courtyards, storage spaces, and multi-story structures constructed by Ancestral Pueblo people more than seven centuries …
Sep 21 2024
Mammoth Cave National Park is best known for the immense labyrinth hidden beneath the rolling hills of central Kentucky, but its wildlife extends far beyond bats hanging from cave ceilings. Above ground, forests, ponds, sinkholes, streams, and the Green and Nolin rivers support white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, coyotes, foxes, beavers, owls, salamanders, turtles, snakes, and …
Sep 21 2024
Mammoth Cave National Park is famous for containing the world’s longest known cave system, but the human story beneath the hills of central Kentucky is almost as remarkable as the cave itself. Thousands of years before modern tourists entered Mammoth Cave, Indigenous people explored its passages by the light of river-cane torches. During the early …
