Archive for the ‘National Parks Photo Spots’ Category
Kenai Fjords National Park, like many other Alaskan parks, is a place of superlatives. Its centerpiece, the Harding field, is the largest ice field in North America, covering more than half of the park. At some places, the thickness exceeds a mile. Unlike other Alaska parks, one section of the park can be easily reached. […]
Wrangell Saint Elias National Park is a park of enormous size, even larger than Gates of the Arctic National Park. At 13.2 million acres (528 thousand squares kilometers), it is six times the size of Yellowstone, and larger than Switzerland. While the Brooks Range mountains that lie in Gates of the Arctic are of modest […]
The first 46 National Parks I went to were relatively easy to visit. In fact, I have always found one of the big draws of the US National Parks was how easily one can access such pristine and magnificent scenery. The last ten include some seriously remote locations. This post features what is possibly the […]
Located in South Carolina just a half-hour’s from its capital Columbia, Congaree National Park preserves the largest remaining old-growth bottomland forest in North America. The easy 2.4 mile boardwalk loop trail is an obvious choice for an introduction to the park, offering diverse perspectives, and natural environments. It begins on the bluff where the visitor […]
Virgin Islands National Park protects a significant part of the Caribbean island of St John, the most relaxed, preserved, and affluent of the US Virgin Islands. Since there are no airports on St John, to travel to this lush tropical paradise, I flew into St Thomas, then took a ferry to St John. There, after […]
The saguaro cactus, with its multiple arms, is an icon of the American West. Although Western Films place them all over the place, they actually grow natively only in the Sonoran Desert, whose US portion is all included in southern Arizona. Around Tucson, the higher rate of precipitation causes the saguaro to grow twice as […]
The Great Sand Dunes protected by the National Park of the same name have the distinction of being the tallest dunes in North America, raising to heights of 750 feet. Climbing the dunes proved quite an exercise. I was making one step backwards for every two steps forward on the deep sand. It took me […]
The Channel Islands of California are situated off the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles coast. Five of those islands form Channel Islands National Park. Inspiration point, on East Anacapa Island, where I am standing, offers possibly the most spectacular view on the entire US West Coast. Earlier in the day, a misty marine layer (a […]
Like in Theodore Roosevelt National Park that we visited two weeks ago, badlands dominate the landscape of Badlands National Park (surprise !). However, there is a striking difference of scenery. While in Theodore Roosevelt National Park I saw the badlands mixed with shrubs, conifers, and aspens (which provide some color accents in autumn), in Badlands […]
Wind Cave National Park, one of the three National Parks (together with Mammoth Cave and Carlsbad Caverns) centered around a cave, was the first cave anywhere in the world to be designated a national park. Although its 134 miles of mapped galleries make it the fourth longest cave in the world, I had heard of […]
