Beneath the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico lies one of the most spectacular cave systems on Earth, Carlsbad Caverns, where a vast underground chamber called the Big Room stretches beneath the surface amid a wonderland of stalactites, stalagmites and delicate mineral formations. Above ground, each summer evening, hundreds of thousands of bats spiral out…
Capitol Reef is Utah’s quiet red-rock gem, built around the Waterpocket Fold, a nearly 100-mile (160 km) wrinkle in the Earth’s crust that buckles the desert into cliffs, domes and hidden canyons. Add the green oasis of the historic Fruita orchards along the Fremont River, and you have a park that pairs rugged canyon country…
Cape Breton Highlands is where the mountains meet the sea in Atlantic Canada, a wild plateau of forested canyons and windswept barrens that plunges to the surf along the world-famous Cabot Trail. One of the most scenic drives on the continent threads its coast and highlands, linking ocean lookouts, hiking trails and the living Acadian…
Canyonlands is the wild, sprawling heart of Utah’s red-rock country, a vast maze of canyons, mesas and spires carved by the Colorado and Green rivers into four distinct districts. From the sweeping overlooks of Island in the Sky to the sculpted spires of The Needles and the trackless Maze, it offers everything from an easy…
Bryce Canyon isn’t really a canyon at all but a series of natural amphitheaters filled with hoodoos, thousands of slender, glowing orange-and-white rock spires that stand like a stone forest. Perched high on the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah, it pairs this otherworldly rockscape with cool pine forest and some of the…
Bruce Peninsula National Park guards a spectacular stretch of the Niagara Escarpment where it meets the turquoise water of Georgian Bay, white dolomite cliffs, the famous sea-cave Grotto, ancient cedars clinging to the rock, and some of the clearest, coldest swimming water in Ontario. It is the crown of the Bruce Trail and a magnet…
Big Bend is Texas on a grand, lonely scale, a sweep of Chihuahuan Desert wrapped around the forested Chisos Mountains and bounded by the Rio Grande, whose canyons mark the border with Mexico. Remote and vast, with some of the darkest skies in North America, it rewards those who make the long drive with desert,…
The Badlands rise from the South Dakota prairie like a maze of eroded spires and striped buttes, a stark, beautiful moonscape carved from ancient seabeds and volcanic ash. Alongside the dramatic rock, the park protects one of the largest mixed-grass prairies in the country, alive with bison, bighorn sheep and prairie dogs, and it holds…
Auyuittuq, “the land that never melts”, is a realm of granite spires, sweeping glaciers and Arctic fjords on Baffin Island. Its centerpiece, the Akshayuk Pass, cuts through the Cumberland Peninsula between towering peaks like Mount Thor and Mount Asgard, drawing hardened backpackers and world-class climbers to one of the most dramatic and demanding wilderness routes…
Aulavik, “place where people travel” in Inuvialuktun, protects a remote Arctic wilderness on the north end of Banks Island, home to the highest density of muskoxen on Earth. Threaded by the gentle Thomsen River, one of the northernmost navigable rivers on the planet, it is a park of open tundra, big skies and profound solitude,…
