Let’s visit National Parks

[DrRoy]

We are doing a couple parks in the winter for the first time. Fairly lucky with the weather so far. Grand Canyon and Bryce.
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[audreyh1]

We are doing a couple parks in the winter for the first time. Fairly lucky with the weather so far. Grand Canyon and Bryce.
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Stunning photos!

We are snow wimps.

 

[Ronstar]

Not quite as good as Dr. Roy's photos of Bryce in winter. Here's what Bryce looked like in mid March 2020.

 

[SecondAttempt]

National Parks can only be created in a bill passed by Congress. Any president, however, may declare federal land parcels to be National Monuments. Most of the recent new national park designations have been a result of legislation with bipartisan sponsors from an individual state, with the main (but unstated) reason being to promote tourism.

Several National Parks are only worthy of National Monument designation IMO, and I believe a few (e.g. Gateway Arch) should be in a different category entirely.

I have been to 49 NPs, quite a few of them more than once. I was at a few of them while they were still national monuments. Probably among the lesser-known parks I've been to include Wrangell-St. Elias, Great Basin, Theodore Roosevelt, and Congaree.

Some of the parks are universally loved such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, & Bryce Canyon. A couple which I think impress me more than most people include Canyonlands & Redwood, both of which I've visited multiple times.

Beauty, significance, or uniqueness are sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
I really liked Congaree, for example. I'm especially interested in plant ecosystems, and there's no significant lowland bottomland like it remaining elsewhere in the southeast. I had never seen a forest similar to it before. There are also some impressive old growth trees amidst the lush vegetation, though they're scattered and not concentrated. Another park which impressed me much more than I expected was Badlands.

Two adjacent state parks, Na Pali Coast and Waimea Canyon, on Kauai, are very much National Park-worthy IMO.

Living in Hawaii and having been to both of those areas, I would agree. Could include Kokee State Park as well in the same NP.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

We’re visiting the Grand Canyon South Rim in April and the Petrified Forest on the way back. Both first time for me.

GC south rim is nice but lots of tourists. The north rim is exceptional. Very few people, especially if you take one of the atv/utv trails to an overlook, there are a few trails down to the water. If they're still open?

My sister has secured lodging reservations for the planned ~24 mile rim to rim hike in May to mark her 70th year. Her first visit to Grand Canyon NP.
If she is unable to meet the challenge, my wife and I will take her place. Not terribly unlikely, as she is working through some hip pain on the training hikes.
We usually seek out lonely back country hikes, so a bit of culture shock should this transpire.

 

[iloveyoga]

14 with the addition of Hot Springs National Park this month.