An Insider’s Guide to America’s Best National Parks

From Parade Magazine June 24, 2018

If you want to feel really good about America, pack your bags and take a trip to one of its parks. “The National Park System is one of the first great American inventions,” says QT Luong, who has spent 25 years photographing all 60 parks. “We had a unique opportunity to preserve pristine land before it saw any development.” Luong and others who know the parks well—writers, rangers, photographers, scientists and conservationists—gave us the inside info on what author Wallace Stegnercalled “the best idea we ever had.” They helped us pick the park that delivers what you’re looking for, whether it’s wildflowers, wildlife, waterfalls or a big dose of peace and quiet.

Quietest

Washington state’s Olympic National Park is home to the Hoh Rain Forest. “If you hike up the Hoh River trail, you come to one of the quietest places in America,” says Rob Smith, regional director with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). “The vegetation, the moss covering everything—there’s a stillness that’s really profound that you can’t find anywhere else.”

On the opposite end of the dampness spectrum, many desert parks offer a different kind of intense quiet. QT Luong cites Utah’s Canyonlands and Capitol Reef national parks as some of the quietest he’s visited. “I find the silence in the desert striking. There are fewer animals and birds, and the silence can be really eerie.”

Birding

Texas’ Big Bend National Park is home to more than 360 different bird species, the most of any national park. Its mountains, deserts and rivers—and its location next to a protected natural area in Mexico—provide a range of ecosystems for birds like the Colima warbler that aren’t found anywhere else in the U.S. “And you can see elf owls there,” says biologist David Lamfrom, who directs wildlife programs for the NPCA (and photographs birds, animals and reptiles). The owls, the smallest in the world, are the size of sparrows. “They’re so cute it’s almost painful.”

Elf owl in Big Bend National Park.  (Art Wolfe Stock/Image Source/MediaBakery)

Best Stargazing

Acadia National Park (Manish Mamtani)

Manish Mamtani grew up in central India, where in summer he and his family often slept under the stars. When he moved to the U.S., he was astonished to learn that 80 percent of Americans can’t see the Milky Way. Now he photographs the national parks at night and posts photos for his 1 million–plus followers on Facebook, such as his pic of the Milky Way rising over Boulder Beach in Acadia National Park (Maine), one of his favorite parks for nighttime viewing. “It’s so beautiful and peaceful if you go to a national park at night,” Mamtani says. “It gives me an idea of how our ancestors saw the night sky. It feels untouched.”

Great Basin in Nevada.

Desert parks offer the best stargazing, says Lamfrom, because the dry air and altitude provide a unique clarity. He loves Great Basin (Nevada), where the brilliance and intensity of the stars and Milky Way make for a night-sky experience unlike any other, he says. Great Basin is one of eight U.S. national parks certified as International Dark Sky Parks by the International Dark-Sky Association. The others are Big Bend (Texas), Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Colorado), Canyonlands (Utah), Capitol Reef (Utah), Death Valley (California and Nevada), Grand Canyon (Arizona) and Joshua Tree (California).

Best For Wildlife

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone (Wyoming, Idaho and Montana) is most definitely where the bison roam and the deer and the antelope play. With the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states, Yellowstone’s 67 species include mountain lions, wolverines, wolves, grizzly bears, mule deer, elk, moose, badgers, river otters, snowshoe hares and pika.
Florida’s Everglades National Park includes such a wide range of ecosystems (freshwater, saltwater, barrier island, pine forest, cypress domes) that it’s “truly remarkable in terms of profound diversity of wildlife,” says the NPCA’s Lamfrom. You can see barred owls, alligators, crocodiles, manatees, dolphins, whales, six species of sea turtles, wood storks, egrets and a host of migratory birds. “Speaking as a wildlife photographer, it’s an outstanding park.”For fewer crowds, bring your binoculars to North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park. “I knew it had badlands, I knew it had wildlife, but it has lots of wildlife,” says Becky Lomax, author of Moon USA National Parks (coming October 2018). “I saw wild horses, coyote and prairie dog towns everywhere, and bison, hawks, golden eagles and even longhorn steers,” a reminder of 1880s cattle drives from Texas to the green pastures of Dakota Territory.

Lowest, Driest, Hottest

Death Valley (California and Nevada) is the park where the mercury once registered the hottest temp (134 degrees F) ever recorded on Earth. It’s also the lowest (282 feet below sea level) and driest (an average 1.9 inches of rain per year) park. Yet Death Valley encompasses an incredible diversity of flora, fauna and geology, from arid salt flats, sand dunes and 11,000-foot mountains to more than 1,000 plant species (including a “superbloom” of wildflowers every 10 to 15 years) to 400-plus wildlife species, including mountain lions and bighorn sheep. “I feel incredibly light-hearted and free when I’m in Death Valley,” says Abby Wines, park management assistant, who has lived and worked there for 13 years.

Most Scenic Drives

Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado) climbs 4,000 feet, from mountain meadows through forests of aspen and ponderosa pine and then fir and spruce and up into tundra, where 200 species of tiny alpine plants cover the ground. “It’s one of the most spectacular drives in the country,” says Luong.

Glacier National Park 

Some 900 miles north in Montana, Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road offers one of the most iconic views in any park, says Lomax. On Logan Pass, the road’s highest point (6,646 feet), you find yourself  “in gorgeous wildflower meadows surrounded by jagged peaks right on top of the Continental Divide.”

Shenandoah