Sep 02 2024
Cadillac Mountain rises 1,530 feet above Mount Desert Island, making it the highest point in Acadia National Park and the highest point along the eastern seaboard of the United States. From its exposed granite summit, visitors can look across Frenchman Bay, the Porcupine Islands, Bar Harbor, neighboring mountains, forested valleys, and the broad waters of …
Sep 02 2024
Yellowstone National Park contains the greatest concentration of geysers on Earth, along with thousands of hot springs, fumaroles, mudpots, steaming vents, and other hydrothermal features. Beneath its forests, rivers, lakes, and wildlife-rich valleys lies an immense volcanic system that continues to heat groundwater and shape the landscape in ways that visitors can see, hear, smell, …
Sep 02 2024
Beneath Yellowstone National Park lies one of the world’s most famous volcanic systems: the Yellowstone Caldera, an enormous collapse basin formed during a colossal eruption approximately 631,000 years ago. Measuring roughly 30 by 45 miles across, the caldera is so large that visitors can drive through it for hours without realizing they are traveling across …
Sep 02 2024
The hot springs of Yellowstone National Park are among the most colorful, unusual, and scientifically important natural features in the United States. Brilliant blue pools seem to glow from within, orange and yellow microbial mats spread across steaming ground, mineral terraces grow and change almost before visitors’ eyes, and clouds of vapor rise from water …
Sep 02 2024
Old Faithful Inn is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the National Park System. Rising beside its namesake geyser in Yellowstone’s Upper Geyser Basin, the enormous log-and-stone hotel combines rustic architecture, early national park tourism, geothermal scenery, and more than a century of history in a single unforgettable place. Built during the winter of …
Sep 02 2024
Going-to-the-Sun Road is the defining scenic drive of Glacier National Park, crossing nearly 50 miles of northern Montana wilderness between the West Glacier and St. Mary sides of the park. Along the way, the road follows the shore of Lake McDonald, passes through old-growth forest, climbs dramatically along the walls of glacial valleys, crosses the …
Sep 02 2024
Lake McDonald is the largest lake in Glacier National Park and one of the most recognizable landscapes in Montana. Stretching for approximately 10 miles through a deep glacial valley on the park’s west side, the lake is surrounded by densely forested mountains that rise toward the Continental Divide. Its clear water, colorful shoreline stones, historic …
Aug 03 2024
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is one of Alaska’s most spectacular combinations of glaciers, mountains, ocean, rainforest, and wildlife. Located in southeastern Alaska west of Juneau, the park protects more than 3.2 million acres of fjords, tidewater glaciers, snow-covered peaks, coastal forests, rocky shorelines, and remote wilderness. Unlike national parks centered around scenic highways, …
Jul 20 2024
Zion National Park is one of the defining landscapes of the American Southwest, a place where enormous sandstone cliffs rise above a ribbon of green cottonwoods and the Virgin River winds through a canyon that seems almost impossibly deep. Located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale, Zion protects roughly 232 square miles of …
Jul 19 2024
Yosemite National Park is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the United States, a place where immense granite cliffs rise above waterfalls, meadows, pine forests, and the winding Merced River. Located in California’s Sierra Nevada, the park protects nearly 1,200 square miles of mountains, valleys, giant sequoia groves, alpine lakes, high-country meadows, and wilderness. …
