Our National Park system is well maintained, managed and still, very wild.
In fact, we have one of the best park systems in the world; here are a few of the hotspots (based on my personal travels and preferences.)
Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Tennessee, North Carolina
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 6.4 million
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which sits between North Carolina and Tennessee, is a wonderland of waterfalls, wildflowers and wildlife. It offers visitors 800 miles of maintained trails where they may see bears, turkeys, woodchucks, raccoons and even elk, which were reintroduced to the park in 2001. It is home to more than 1,660 kinds of flowering plants, more than any other national park in America, earning it the moniker “the wildflower park.”
More info: nps.gov/grsm
Grand Canyon National Park – Arizona
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 3.2 million
Established in 1919, the Grand Canyon is perhaps the most famous of America's national parks. It is an enormous stretch of canyon: 277 miles long (measured by the length of the river at its bottom), 6,000 vertical feet at its deepest and as much as 18 miles across in some places. It takes about two days to get to the bottom of the canyon and back on foot. And it receives close to 5 million visitors each year.
More info: nps.gov/grca
Yellowstone National Park – Wyoming, Montana and Idaho
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 2.7 million
Established in 1872, Yellowstone is the nation's oldest national park. It's known for its geysers and hot springs. Indeed, Yellowstone contains 60% of the world's geysers, including Old Faithful, its most famous, and the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, America's largest hot spring. The park also houses a rich collection of historical artifacts in its museum, library and research centers.
More info: nps.gov/yell
Yosemite National Park – California
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 2.7 million
Yosemite National Park lies east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada and offers visitors a varied landscape of deep valleys, vast meadows and groves of giant sequoia trees. Ninety-five percent of the park is designated as wilderness. It's best known for its spectacular waterfalls, which are at their most robust in spring.
More info: nps.gov/yose
Badlands National Park – South Dakota
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 776,805
Hundreds of thousands of years of erosion carved Badlands National Park's extraterrestrial-like landscape of multicolored canyons, buttes and spires. Beyond its amazing views, the park contains rich fossil deposits from the Oligocene Epoch dating 28 million to 37 million years ago. Bison, foxes and bighorn sheep roam its prairies.
More info: nps.gov/badl
Hot Springs National Park – Arkansas
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 807,282
Hot Springs National Park is not what the uninitiated visitor may expect. You can take baths here, but not quite in a natural hot spring. Instead, the park collects hot water from its springs and distributes it to bathhouses open for public use. The park's Bathhouse Row features eight historic bathhouses dating to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Of the eight, Buckstaff and Quapaw remain open as bathhouses. Ozark bathhouse reopened as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Hot Springs in early 2009.
More info: nps.gov/hosp
Glacier National Park – Montana
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 1.6 million
Glacier National Park is named after the glaciers that carved its landscape millions of years ago. Native Americans know it as the “Backbone of the World.” The park has 13 campsites and more than 700 miles of hiking trails. Glacier celebrates its centennial anniversary in 2010.More info: nps.gov/glac
Grand Teton National Park – Wyoming
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 2 million
Grand Teton National Park straddles 485 square miles of mountains, rivers and wilderness in northwest Wyoming south of Yellowstone. The park is famous for its wildlife. Visitors can see bald eagles, otters and beavers in Oxbow Bend, elk on Timbered Island and bison along Snake River. Grand Teton features a range of lodges, cabins and ranches for overnight visitors.
More info: nps.gov/grte
Rocky Mountains National Park – Colorado
Visitors in 2009: 2 million
Rocky Mountain National Park is nestled in the Colorado Rockies northwest of Boulder. Its 416 square miles of mountainous terrain features 359 trails for hikers, 150 lakes for anglers, 60 mountains taller than 12,000 feet for climbers and a slew of elk, bighorn sheep and moose.
More info: nps.gov/romo
Acadia National Park – Maine
Visitors in 2009 (through August): 1.5 million
Acadia was the nation's first national park east of the Mississippi. It features 125 miles of hiking trails, two beaches and two campgrounds. Water sports such as kayaking and canoeing are popular here.
More info: nps.gov/acad
Obviously, our nation offers a lot more choices in terms of National Parks.
We also have battle fields and historical markers that are national parks and monuments as well as other parks renown for natural beauty, wilderness, and nature.
These were chosen from a list of the most visited, but we have so many National Parks that just about everyone's interests can be met.
To learn more about our National Parks and what is available to visit, please check out the LA Times.