Jun 11 2026
Three days in Glacier National Park is enough time to experience its famous alpine road, turquoise lakes, waterfalls, wildlife, mountain passes, and at least one memorable hike—but only if you plan the trip geographically. Glacier is much larger than it initially appears on a map. Lake McDonald anchors the west side, Logan Pass sits high …
Jun 08 2026
Crater Lake National Park protects one of the most extraordinary volcanic landscapes in North America: a nearly six-mile-wide caldera filled with water so intensely blue that the lake can appear almost unreal on a clear summer day. At 1,943 feet deep, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and one of the …
Jun 06 2026
Channel Islands National Park protects five rugged islands and the surrounding Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Southern California. Although the islands can be seen from portions of the mainland on clear days, crossing the Santa Barbara Channel creates the feeling of traveling much farther from civilization. Roads, hotels, restaurants, stores, and ordinary visitor …
Jun 05 2026
Carlsbad Caverns National Park protects one of the most extraordinary underground landscapes in the world. Beneath the rugged Chihuahuan Desert of southeastern New Mexico lies a vast network of limestone caves containing enormous chambers, bottomless-looking pits, delicate stalactites, massive stalagmites, flowstone, gypsum deposits, cave pearls, columns, draperies, and formations that have been growing for hundreds …
Jun 04 2026
Capitol Reef National Park protects one of the most remarkable geological landscapes on the Colorado Plateau: the Waterpocket Fold, a nearly 100-mile-long wrinkle in Earth’s crust where tilted layers of sandstone, shale, limestone, and ancient sedimentary rock rise into cliffs, domes, narrow canyons, natural bridges, arches, monoliths, and colorful desert badlands. Located in south-central Utah, …
Jun 04 2026
Shenandoah National Park stretches along Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, protecting nearly 200,000 acres of hardwood forest, waterfalls, mountain summits, rocky overlooks, wildlife habitat, and more than 500 miles of hiking trails. Yet unlike many mountain parks where the greatest scenery requires hours of backcountry travel, Shenandoah makes much of its landscape remarkably accessible. The reason …
Jun 03 2026
Canyonlands National Park protects a vast wilderness of deeply carved canyons, towering mesas, sandstone spires, natural arches, sheer cliffs, desert basins, and two of the American Southwest’s great rivers. Spread across more than 337,000 acres of southeastern Utah, the park is so rugged that the Colorado and Green rivers divide it into districts that appear …
Jun 02 2026
Bryce Canyon National Park protects one of the most unusual landscapes in the American Southwest: an enormous natural amphitheater filled with thousands of orange, pink, white, and red rock spires known as hoodoos. No other place on Earth contains a greater concentration of these irregular stone columns. Despite its name, Bryce Canyon is not really …
Jun 01 2026
Biscayne National Park protects a landscape that looks almost nothing like the traditional image of an American national park. There are no mountains, deep canyons, geysers, or long scenic highways. More than 95 percent of the park is water, and most of its greatest attractions lie beneath the surface or beyond the mainland shoreline. Mangrove …
Jun 01 2026
Big Bend National Park protects more than 800,000 acres of mountains, desert, river canyons, volcanic formations, fossil beds, historic ranches, mining landscapes, and Chihuahuan Desert wilderness along the sweeping curve of the Rio Grande in far West Texas. It is one of the largest and most isolated national parks in the contiguous United States, a …
