Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Lake Clark National Park, situated on the Alaska Peninsula, does not include the superlatives of the other Alaskan parks such as highest or northernmost mountains, largest icefield or glaciers. Instead, the park preserves a supremely varied wilderness where all the geographical features of Alaska can be found in a relatively small area. Maybe because the […]
Glacier Bay National Park encompasses fifteen tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs into a vast, Y-shaped marine fjord on the Southeast coast of Alaska. Two hundred years ago, the fjord was still a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice, but it now includes plant communities ranging from mature spruce and hemlock rainforests, to thinly […]
One of the most recently designated National Parks, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park preserves the most dramatic section of the canyon of the Gunnison River in Colorado. Unlike other canyons in the Southwest which were carved into soft rock, extremely hard metamorphic rock form the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. […]
Haleakala National Park, on the island of Maui, Hawaii, like Hawaii Volcanoes National Park encompasses terrain ranging from the ocean shore to the summit of a high volcano, created by the same hot spot that generated the Big Island of Hawaii. The difference is that while the volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii exhibits […]
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is the place where the past and present volcanic island activity can be observed. It is the easiest place in the world to come close to a active volcano. The entire island was created by the Mauna Loa volcano, which now towers 13700 feet above […]
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 […]
Posted on November 22, 2010, 6:16 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
I thought that the alpine gardens of Paradise were hard to surpass in terms of beautiful vegetation in the summer, when they are covered with an incredibly thick wildflower display. After a new visit last fall, I am no longer sure which season I prefer in the park. While the flower carpets cover lot of […]
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 […]
