What’s your favorite National Park? I love Bryce Canyon, Zion, Yellowstone, and the Badlands. If I had to choose one, I guess I’d choose Yellowstone. They have wolves now.
I also really like the Grand Tetons and Yosemite. But, the nicest place I’ve ever been (outside Switzerland) was in the Sierra Nevadas near Kings Canyon National Park.
I choose Voyageurs National Park every year.
that looks really nice and they have wolves!!
How long does it take you to get up there?
Hearing the wolves howl late at night is really cool. It’s hard to catch glimpses of them, but not impossible.
To drive from St. Louis is about 16 hours. I usually fly though. I send my stuff up with the people who drive (and who stay longer than me).
The Everglades and/or any state park south of Miami.
My personal favorite as well.
By bobxxl at 2008-08-23
I love this photo, Bobx, was hoping you’d post it again. The river of grass is every bit as awesome as purple mountain majesties.
Gunnison National Forest is way kewl! Its a little out of the way and so, much more private. Great skiing in the winter, too.
It says there are no poisonous snakes there. I like that.
There are bears, although we didn’t see any ourselves. The elk were in rut and I think their bawling at dusk drove all the other critters away.
I love Canyonlands National Park. I only wish there was more time to explore it. I still have a picture of me carrying the then 6 month old b2 boy while walking the park. (He is 10 years old now.)
The Needles district of Canyonlands is our favorite hiking area in all the National Park system (though Island in the Sky probably has the highest per capita of spectacular views overlooks). We’ve been there multiple times so if you do go back and have any questions, let me know.
Thanks!
The Malheur Widlife Reserve in Eastern Oregon. And, when not camping, the place to stay is this hotel. Since it isn’t even a real park, there is no fancy website.
This pic doesn’t begin to do it justice.
(Ok I need to dial it down again with the commenting. I can feel almost forgotten commenting addiction issues rearing their head…)
Very cute little hotel.
rky mt is practically in my back yard, and it’s spectacular…but crowded.
if you want to get away from it all, including people, glacier is my favorite. the last time we went was after labor day, mid sept, and the park was virtually deserted compared to RMP.
gorgeous country, great fishing, camping and miles and miles of amazing trails.
Padre Island National Seashore is the only one I’ve ever been to. When I had a 4WD, I’d go fishing, help with beach clean up, and the most amazing thing of all, watch endangered sea turtles being released back to the surf.
Hard to get to…an acquired taste…but incredibly beautiful in its stark drama, and unique in all the world!
I went to a wedding in a site that overlooked the North Dakota badlands. It was a breathtaking view. Try it.
North Dakota: Custer was healthy when he left!
Channel Islands National Park! I see it every single day on my way to work. In fact, anyone who lives in the Ventura/Santa Barbara area can see it any time they want. Just look out to sea. 🙂
Definitely Zion out of the ones you mentioned, but that’s the only one of those I’ve been to. Of the others, Smoky Mountains National Park is my favorite. The sheer antiquity of the land is awe-inspiring. Did you know that the Appalachians once were higher than the Himalayas and that the other half of the chain — before continental drift created the Atlantic Ocean — is the Atlas Mountains of Morocco?
I love Big Bend in Texas. It may not be the “best” park, but it is wonderful to be there and in the towns around it. And thats where the friendly Texas are.
Yosemite. I’ve had some great times there, and it’s all beautiful. Redwood is another favorite.
I’ve been to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Zion, also really great places.
Great Smokey Mountains always feels like home.
But there is no match to The Adirondack Park
Sequoia National Park.
Most parks are based on views, panoramas. Sequoia is based on living organisms. Absolutely unique and amazing organisms.
Everyone that visits should go there, and anybody who LIVES in Cali that does not visit at least once should be convicted of a crime.
If a person can see those trees, and not KNOW some things are worth preserving no matter what the cost, well, there would be something wrong with their souls. No picture does them justice. No description works. They are beyond belief.
nalbar
and you can drive your car through them!!
“Most parks are based on views, panoramas.”
Highly doubtful, when one considers how many national parks exist to preserve sites of (human) historical importance alone. (Check, especially, the eastern states, including the southeastern ones, on the Park Service website, nalbar: there’s quite a preponderance of parks preserving Civil War battlefields, Revolutionary War battlefields, socially or politically significant locations from those times, etc.)
Nothing against Sequoia, which is remarkable for the reason you state, but your characterization of “most [other] parks” is both false and trivializing.
Human history is also important. I like Canyon de Chelly and Bandelier — to name but two parks devoted to the preservation of (pre-European-invasion) human history.
Almost all of these are wonderful – and there’s very few of them I haven’t been to. (I finally got to the Everglades last year!) But I’d also add Olympic Natl Park in my neck of the woods, for the simple reason that most of it is wilderness, thousands of square miles of it, inaccessible by road. It doesn’t have any of the crowding problems of nearby Mt. Rainier or the Rockies, CA, or UT parks. You have to hike in to see more than a bit of it. There’s also a long stretch of wilderness seashore, unique in the continental US. The visitors’ center at Hurricane Ridge, south of Port Angeles, is a good taste, for the car-bound.
All of those Utah parks are beautiful. We had a great vacation last fall starting in Arches and ending in Zion.
to western Colorado, Capulin Volcano is worth the tiny detour.
We always seen wildlife in dorman basin, and lightning strikes & storms out on the horizons.
Glacier is by far my favorite.
Jim and I think Glacier has the biggest “OH WOW” factor of any place we’ve hiked. Just when we’d think we’d seen the most gorgeous sight the park had to offer we’d turn a corner and there’s be an even more gorgeous one.
I love Canyonlands, Arches, and Bryce and Zion. Plus, the Grand Canyon is so, like, Grand. The other parks are great too. What a nation to so preserve these national treasures for generations to come.
God bless America many times over!
I’m pretty partial to the Tetons, but I left my heart in Jasper.
Another great US park is Volcano (on Oahu). There’s nothing quite like having your left side feel like you’re in the mid-day sun on a 90 degree day while your left side is chilly from the breeze off the ocean.
It also changed my perspective on things. When you see molten rock flowing next to you, you realize that everything is impermanent. I took a water break at the bottom of this sign about 8 days before this picture was taken:
The best thing to come out of the Clinton administration was buying that ranch.
Those little black dots down in the caldera are cattle (or Elk). Hard to comprehend the whole(14 mi diameter) thing exploding.