Gros Morne is Newfoundland’s crown jewel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the very guts of the Earth lie exposed. Glacier-carved fjords, flat-topped mountains, and the barren, rust-colored Tablelands, a slab of the planet’s mantle pushed to the surface, tell a story of continental collision that helped prove plate tectonics, all set against a wild…
The Great Smoky Mountains are the most visited national park in the United States, a soft, blue-hazed range of the southern Appalachians draped in the richest temperate forest in North America. Ancient rounded peaks, misty coves, cascading streams and a stunning diversity of life, from wildflowers to black bears and elk, make the Smokies a…
Great Basin is one of America’s quietest and most surprising parks, a lonely mountain island rising from the Nevada desert, crowned by 13,000-foot (4,000 m) Wheeler Peak and ancient bristlecone pines, honeycombed below by the ornate Lehman Caves, and roofed by some of the darkest skies on the continent. Far from any city, it rewards…
Grasslands National Park preserves one of the last untouched fragments of the North American mixed-grass prairie, a vast, rolling sea of grass, badlands and coulees under enormous skies in southern Saskatchewan. Reintroduced plains bison once again roam here, black-tailed prairie dogs chatter from their towns, and the park’s Dark Sky Preserve status makes for some…
Few mountain views on Earth rival the Tetons, a young, jagged range that rockets straight up more than a mile from the flat floor of Jackson Hole, with no foothills to soften the drama. Mirror-still lakes at their base, the Snake River winding through sage flats, and abundant wildlife make Grand Teton a photographer’s dream…
Glacier National Park is the “Crown of the Continent”, a million acres of the northern Rockies in Montana, where knife-edge peaks, hanging valleys, turquoise lakes and the last of the park’s namesake glaciers meet along the Continental Divide. The legendary Going-to-the-Sun Road threads its heart, and grizzlies, mountain goats and bighorn sheep roam a wilderness…
Georgian Bay Islands National Park protects a scattering of wind-sculpted islands in the world’s largest freshwater archipelago, the iconic landscape of pink granite, windswept pines and blue water immortalized by Canada’s Group of Seven painters. Reached only by boat, its largest island, Beausoleil, offers a classic Canadian mix of Shield rock, forest trails and warm…
Cuyahoga Valley is an unexpected pocket of nature between Cleveland and Akron, a green corridor of forests, waterfalls, wetlands and rolling farmland along the winding Cuyahoga River. Once heavily industrialized, the reborn valley now offers waterfalls like Brandywine, the historic Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath, and a beloved scenic railroad, all within easy reach of…
Crater Lake holds the deepest, and arguably the bluest, water in the United States, a nearly 2,000-foot (600 m)-deep lake filling the caldera of a volcano that collapsed some 7,700 years ago. Ringed by cliffs and fed only by snow and rain, its astonishing clarity and color have made this southern Oregon landmark one of…
Congaree protects the largest intact stretch of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States, a towering, cathedral-like floodplain forest of champion trees along the Congaree River in South Carolina. Fed by the river’s frequent floods, it is a lush, humid wilderness of soaring trunks and quiet water, best explored on a boardwalk stroll…
