May 25 2025
Zabriskie Point is one of the most famous viewpoints in Death Valley National Park, offering a sweeping look across golden badlands, deeply eroded ridges, Manly Beacon, and the distant Panamint Range. The landscape looks almost sculpted, with sharp folds and gullies carved into soft sediment by rare but powerful rainstorms. The viewpoint is especially popular …
May 25 2025
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are the most accessible and best-known sand dunes in Death Valley National Park. Located near Stovepipe Wells along CA-190, the dunes rise in sweeping ridges and curves from an otherwise broad desert valley surrounded by rugged mountains. Although Death Valley is often imagined as an endless sea of sand, dunes cover …
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 19 2025
Grand Canyon National Park protects one of the most extraordinary landscapes in North America: a vast gorge carved by the Colorado River through layers of rock that record nearly two billion years of Earth history. Stretching for hundreds of miles across northern Arizona, the canyon reaches more than a mile deep in places and exposes …
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 14 2025
Oklahoma does not contain one of the 63 places officially designated National Park, but that does not mean the state lacks federally protected landscapes worth exploring. The National Park Service manages several important Oklahoma sites, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service protect additional mountains, forests, grasslands, lakes, and wilderness areas …
