Visiting America's National Parks

 

I just put together a collaborative presentation on national parks for my camera club, and it reminded me how important it is to visit our country’s national wonders.

There are 63 national parks, and Roland and I counted up the number we had visited. We’re not sure we got them all, but we saw at least six with the children and at least ten additional ones by ourselves, either before they were born or after they grew up. While that sounds like a lot, it is only about a quarter of America’s national parks.

I’ve been to a few more because my family traveled all over the country when I was a child, but I don’t remember all of them. There were also some duplicates, such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.

The photo at the head of this post is the well-known Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park. I took it and the following photo from the Mammoth Springs area of the park during my visit there with Roland in 2005.

In 2014, Roland accompanied me on a research trip for Desert Jewels. Roland had never been to the Grand Canyon, and, since we were going to be sort-of in that area, we added it to the itinerary. This photo was taken from the east side of the rim, and that’s the Colorado River at the bottom.

A year ago we drove out to visit Roland’s sister in Arizona. Along the way, we visited two national parks and a national monument. The national parks were both in New Mexico. The next photo is a rock formation inside Carlsbad Caverns, which I call a stone waterfall. The one after that was taken at White Sands National Park and shows a dry lake bed that apparently has a little water in it for one or two months a year but not during September when we were there.

The National Park System includes more than just national parks, however, for a total of 431 locations. We have visited many of the national monuments, battlefields, and other historic sites on the list—some with and some without the children. Although I have limited space here, I am including photos of two of the 86 national monuments. The first is Wupatki National Monument in Arizona, which we visited on our way back from Sue’s house last year. The second is from our 2005 trip to Yellowstone and needs no introduction.

It would have been nice to include some photos of the many national parks, monuments, and battlefields that we visited with the children while they were growing up, but those photos were taken with film. I’m simply too lazy to dig through boxes of prints to find them.

I highly recommend visiting America’s national parks. In fact, any site within the  national park system is well worth seeing. Go to www.nps.gov to find information on particular locations.

If you are a senior (62 or more) or a veteran, you can get a lifetime pass. The senior lifetime pass is $80, but that is well worth the money if you plan on going to several places. Roland and I both purchased senior lifetime passes because we didn’t realize we only needed one. A pass is valid for everyone in the holder’s car when the entrance fee is per car and for a total of four persons when the entrance fee is per person. It does have the customer’s name on it, though, so if two spouses each plan on doing some independent travel, then maybe getting two is worth it.

There is also a free lifetime pass for veterans, which also covers all the occupants of the car or three individuals besides the veteran. If we had realized that, we would have saved even more money. Even so, what we did spend has already been worth it.

Here is a link to the page with information about passes.

Entrance Passes (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

If you are planning a vacation and don’t know where to go, check out the national park system.