We are focusing on the national parks because their natural beauty has been so moving and enjoyable to us. (The NPS has authority over more than just the national parks, including for example national monuments, and there are about 400 protected areas in total.) There are 59 national parks in the US, and we have visited 20 of them.
In the summer of 2010 we visited Denali National Park in Alaska with our tandem bike.
Denali became a national park in 1917, originally under the name of Mt McKinley National Park. In 1975 the mountain was renamed Denali, which means high one in native Athabaskan language. This photo shows the one gravel road in the park, where private vehicles are prohibited, to help keep the park more "wild."
We took a bus out to Wonder Lake where they had a variety of deer, elk and moose horns. The horns are surprisingly heavy!
Denali National Park is the most rugged and largest park (it includes almost 25,000 square kilometers) we have visited. But the wildflowers we saw were very delicate.
In 2012 we went to Hawaii for scuba diving certification, and we also visited the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It was incredibly foggy while we were there!
We were surprised to learn that the national park was created in 1916, even before the NPS was formed. We hiked across the barren lava beds at more than 4,000 meters elevation. Pete is near a steam vent.
This park on the Big Island of Hawaii protects the Kīlauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes, two of the world's most active geological features. Kristina is next to pahoehoe lava that is characterized by smooth, rippling surface texture.
We loved the dramatic colors of this fern, especially in contrast to the dark lava rocks.
In 2014 we watched Ken Burns’ documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. We learned about the history of the parks and saw so many beautiful images that we were motivated to plan trips to visit them.
We took a road trip to Marfa, Texas. Along the way we visited the Grand Canyon National Park. We hiked from Hermit's Rest partway down the canyon.
Kristina had hiked the canyon 35 years earlier with her Mom Patty, Aunt Marge and cousin Cynthia, but this was Pete's first visit. He found the canyon to be impressively huge!
The trees that grow in the Grand Canyon are stunted by the wind and lack of water, so they often have a gnarled appearance.
From the Burns’ documentary we learned about Stephen Mather and his efforts to create the National Park Service. Mather served as the first director of the NPS, from 1916-1929. He believed that magnificent scenery should be the first criterion for establishing a national park.
Mather was also instrumental in prohibiting commercialism in the national parks. We hiked part of the South Rim Trail, and despite the depth of the canyon, at points we could see views of the Colorado River running through it.
We drove by Guadalupe Mountain National Park as we were leaving Texas. We learned this park has the world's largest fossil reef but we didn't see it.
On the same road trip we visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
The caverns were "decorated" over thousands of years by dripping water that contained calcite. The stalagmites and stalactites have formed in unique, intricate shapes.
These draperies were formed by sheets of water on the cavern ceilings.
Then in June of 2014 we started a five month road trip across the US and Canada, and we visited twelve US National Parks. First we camped and picnicked in the California redwoods.
Managed jointly as Redwood National and State Parks, its size is just over 450 square kilometers and includes more than half of the remaining redwood trees.
This is the largest Giant Sequoia in the park, with a height of 108 meters and a diameter of 16 meters!
We had a great time riding our tandem on the Avenue of the Giants. We felt so close to the beautiful trees as we rode.
This is Crater Lake National Park. The lake was created about 7,700 years ago when an ancient volcano called Mount Mazama erupted and then collapsed to form this caldera.
We rode around the lake, 53 kilometers. In this photo we're on the north side at an elevation of 2,075 meters.
At a depth of almost 600 meters, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States. It's famous for its vivid blue color and water clarity. There are no inlets or outlets, all water comes through precipitation and it's said to be the cleanest lake in the US.
Wizard Island was formed by a subsequent volcanic eruption of a cinder cone 7300 years ago.
We spotted this cute marmot by the side of the road.
In Washington we visited Mount Rainier National Park, which was established in 1899 as the fifth national park. It was exciting to see the peak for the first time, knowing it's an active stratovolcano and the most prominent peak in the Cascades.
We used our ski poles to help us hike in the snow, and it was still difficult.
The current NPS Director is Jonathan Jarvis, who has 30 years of conservation leadership, including being the Superintendent of Mt Rainier National Park for 3 years.
Glacier became a national park in 1910, thanks to the untiring efforts of George Bird Grinnell. A committed naturalist, he would later establish the Audubon Society. About Glacier, Grinnell coined the phrase The Crown of the Continent. We loved Glacier National Park because of its incredible natural beauty.
The Going to the Sun Road in an engineering marvel that was lots of fun to drive on, but it didn't offer enough shoulder for us to ride our tandem on it.
The mountain goat is Glacier's mascot. This one was cooling off in the snow patch, very close to the hiking trail.
We saw this Cedar Waxwing and especially liked its "super hero" eye mask.
After several days of hiking in Glacier NP, we took a break and canoed around Two Medicine Lake.
Next we went west to Yellowstone National Park. There were thousands of people lined up to view the Old Faithful geyser eruptions.
Yellowstone park has the world's only hot spot volcano on land, and as a result it has more than half of the world's geothermal features. This geyser field had lots of steam coming from small geysers and steam vents.
While hiking around the Mammoth Hot Springs area we saw travertine formations like these. They are made of melted limestone that is carried up by underground hot springs to form these enormous and beautiful shapes.
This is Morning Glory hot spring, and the colors come from heat-tolerant bacteria and algae that live in the pool.
In 1872 Yellowstone became the first US national park. But bison-poaching and cattle-grazing were huge problems that persisted even when the US Army began to manage the park in 1886. In 1894 public outrage pushed Congress to first pass the Park Protection Act that gave money for park management, and then the Lacey Act that provided legal support for prosecuting poachers, which saved the bison from going extinct in Yellowstone. Today more than 60 mammal species live in the park, and we felt fortunate to see grizzly bears, elk and bison, all from a safe distance.
Mixed in with the history of protecting the parks for all Americans to enjoy, is the shameful treatment of some Native Americans. For example, during the 1870s and 1880s half a dozen Native American tribes were banned from Yellowstone, in spite of an 1868 treaty that gave them the right to hunt there.
This area is called Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
Another part of Native American history is that the Nez Perce tribe of 750 people passed through Yellowstone National Park in 1877. They were being forced off their land and pursued by the US Army. Some of the Nez Perce were friendly to the tourists and other people they encountered in the park; some were not. Nine park visitors were briefly taken captive. Despite Chief Joseph ordering that no one should be harmed, at least two people were killed and several wounded.
This is one of the most-photographed views in the park.
South of Yellowstone is the Grand Teton National Park.
Our first views of the Teton mountains were breath-taking. The rugged mountains rise right from the valley floor to heights of almost 4,000 meters!
The picturesque Jenny Lake area was fun to stroll around. And in the winter we’ve cross country skated nearby.
We chose a hike near Moose that looped around Lake Taggart. The scenery was as gorgeous as Glacier National Park, and we thoroughly enjoyed hiking here.
Moose are a favorite subject of sculpture throughout the area, like this bull moose outside the park's visitors center.
Badlands National Park in South Dakota has striking geology that was formed 75-30 million years ago.
The upper striations in the rock were largely caused by ash that blew over the area from nearby volcanic eruptions.
Pete climbed up for a closer look, and here he's climbing down.
Badlands has the world's richest fossil beds from the Oligocene epoch, and the wildlife includes bison, bighorn sheep, black-footed ferrets, and swift foxes. Pete is holding fossil teeth from an oreodont.
We also learned about Acadia National Park from the Ken Burns' documentary. The film showed how George Dorr donated his land and persuaded other wealthy land owners to do the same. Dorr is credited as the father of Acadia and became the park's first superintendent.
Acadia National Park is located on Mount Desert Island and surrounded by other small islands, so sea views are a big part of this park's charm.
The islands are extremely rocky without much soil, making it difficult for trees to grow on the mountains here.
Rock cairns mark the trails.
Between 1915 to 1933, the wealthy philanthropist John D Rockefeller, Jr. financed, designed, and directed the construction of a 92 Km network of carriage trails throughout the park.
George Dorr talked Rockefeller into donating the carriage trails to the park, which he did with the stipulation that they be maintained to his standards and be used only by horses, bikes and people (no automobiles). We rented a tandem bike and spent a day cycling on the crushed stone carriage roads.
Riding in Acadia was a highlight!
We even saw a horse drawn carriage. By the end of the day, we had ridden close to 60 kilometers on the carriage roads.
Our road trip paused for us to do a month long meditation retreat in Massachusetts. Then we took several weeks to drive back to the Bay Area. We stopped in Colorado at Mesa Verde National Park.
Mesa Verde has over 4,000 archaeological sites of the Ancestral Puebloan people, who lived here for at least 700 years. Because it was November and late in the season, only the Spruce Tree House was open for visitors.
Kristina is in front of the visitor’s center, and you can see Mesa Verde in the background. Mesa Verde is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Inhabited in the 13th century, the cliff dwellers farmed corn, beans and squash on the mesa above their homes.
After touring the Spruce Tree House we hiked the Petroglyph Trail. The petroglyphs, carved artworks, are symbols for different tribes that lived in the area.
In Utah, Arches National Park felt like winter when we visited.
This formation is called The Three Gossips.
The red sandstone arches are formed by wind and water. Kristina's folks sent us a link to a fascinating article in the Financial Times that explains why sandstone erodes in this beautiful way.
The US Post Office has issued Centennial NPS commemorative stamps, like this one for Arches National Park. And there are lots of celebrations going on in August for the 100th birthday.
Great Basin National Park is one of the newest national parks, as it was created in 1986.
The Rhodes cabin from 1928 is now an interpretive center for the park.
We appreciate the efforts of John Muir and others that created Yosemite National Park in 1864. The Yosemite Land Grant passed through Congress and was signed by Abraham Lincoln.
You may be surprised that we hadn't visited Yosemite until 2014, since it's one of the closest parks to the Bay Area.
Yosemite has glacier-carved valleys surrounded by granite peaks. We were awed by the sheer granite walls surrounding Yosemite Valley.
We learned about Horace Albright from the Burns' documentary. He was a conservationist who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (like us), but he finished in 1912. Albright served as Superintendent of Yellowstone and then of Yosemite. He was Mather's right hand at the NPS until he took over as Director in 1929. How fortunate we feel that people like Albright and Mathur were compelled to create and support the NPS!
280 million people visit the US national parks each year.
In February of 2015 we visited Death Valley National Park with Kristina’s folks. They are in front of the Ubehebe Crater.
2,000 years ago molten magma mixed with an underground spring to create a huge volcanic explosion. The result was this 800 feet deep crater named Ubehebe Crater. We walked all the way around the crater rim. It was windy as we hiked, but we were rewarded with different views of the crater.
One of the most lucrative minerals in Death Valley was borax. We visited the Borax Museum and saw the old equipment and vehicles used by the miners. This wagon was used to haul timber.
Patty and Pete are in an area called Artist’s Palette. The volcanic rocks here were affected by hydrothermal activity that concentrated minerals with vibrant colors like green and pink.
Next we went to some of the beautiful sand dunes in Death Valley. Through the Burns’ documentary, we learned about the Untold Stories Project that brings underprivileged 7th graders from Las Vegas to Death Valley. Here’s a link to a short video about the Death Valley Rocks program.
This summer we visited the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The park gets its name Black Canyon because parts in the canyon receive only 33 minutes of daylight each day. It's the steepest canyon with the narrowest walls in the US.
At 690 meters, the Painted Wall is the tallest sheer cliff in Colorado.
And the 20th national park we visited in August was the Lassen Volcanic National Park. We learned that it's Lassen's centennial birthday this year too!
Lassen Peak is 3,187 meters tall, and it's probably the world's largest plug dome volcano. Plug dome volcanoes have lava that is too viscous to flow, so when they erupt it's an explosion.
Mt Lassen erupted most recently in 1915. Perhaps this boulder was moved here by the subsequent avalanches after the eruption. Photographs of the eruption led to Lassen becoming a national park.
To the left is Brokeoff Mountain, the second highest peak in the park, and some other remnants of volcanic activity. The mountains in Lassen National Park are part of the Cascades, which stretch all the way north into British Columbia.
This area is named Chaos Jumbles, and it was created about 350 years ago when avalanches carried huge amounts of rocks down from the mountain. The jumbles of rocks can be up to 450 meters thick! And the trees that can grow in the rocks here are dwarf mixed conifers.
We hiked out to Bumpass Hell to check out the geothermal features. We are in front of hot pools, steam vents and boiling mud pots.
Bumpass Hell reminded us of Yellowstone's Mammoth Springs area, and it was crowded here too. It's heartening to see so many people enjoying the national parks, about 280 million visitors each year!
Even with all the geothermal features and resulting sulfur, we saw wildflowers growing nearby. We agree with Ken Burns that the US national parks are America's Greatest Idea.
We liked this green meadow so we stopped to take some photos. Behind us are Kings Creek, which flows into the Feather River and then into the Truckee River in Tahoe, and Lassen Peak is in the distance.
Our visit to Lassen was a great finale to our 2016 summer road trip! How many national parks have you visited? Do you have plans to visit any new parks in the future? We hope so!
