America’s national parks are known for their great vistas and fantastic rock formations, but they also preserve another treasure: wildlife. In fact, national parks rank among the best places to see interesting and rare wildlife. Late summer marks a particularly good time for wildlife viewing at many parks as most mothers bring out their young by that time of the year.
Given the breadth of national park locations, there’s also the opportunity to see almost every kind of North American wildlife, from those that live on mountains, in marine environments, and in the tropics to those that make their homes on prairies, deserts, and in temperate forests.
Mountains
Travelers can explore the “Serengeti of North America” on the Lamar Valley Trail at Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. Like the mountain-ringed African plain, Lamar Valley serves as home to the classic megafauna that defines North America. Bison, elk, grizzlies, black bears, wolves, coyotes, eagles, osprey and more all can be found at this high elevation. Coyotes also can be seen wandering about, looking for a meal while bald eagles and osprey grace the skies. Grizzlies reside in the hilly woods, but they and the area’s other big two predators – black bears and wolf packs – prefer to remain under cover than be seen.
Marine
You can encounter an array of marine wildlife on the Beach Trail at Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. Low tide also provides an opportunity to see intertidal life. As the waters retreat into the ocean – and water levels here can fall 25 vertical feet, among the greatest extremes in the world – a number of animals and plants are exposed. Don’t be surprised to spot starfish and snails on the sands and grasses. On shore, a variety of sea birds gather and fly over, often nabbing exposed intertidal creatures for a meal. During those first moments of sunlight, watch for humpback whales, harbor porpoise, puffins, sea otters, and Steller sea lions, frolicking and feeding in the mouth of the bay. Bring binoculars. If lucky, you’ll also hear the blow of humpback whales.
Tropics
Tropical wildlife can be safely seen from the Anhinga Trail at Florida’s Everglades National Park. The trail’s boardwalk takes you over open water where you can watch for alligators peeking out of a river, as well as turtles, herons and egrets. Winter marks the best season to see the most wildlife. A number of birds spend their time in the Everglades after migrating from a northern clime. Among those you can spot are the double-crested cormorant, great egret, great blue heron, snowy egret, tricolored heron, white ibis and wood stork. Turkey vultures congregate in the marsh during the early morning hours.
Prairies
North America’s largest mammal – the bison – freely roams North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and the Buckhorn Trail is an excellent place to spot them and other Great Plains wildlife. The trail includes a prairie dog town that stretches for about a mile. You’ll be able to spot them barking from their burrow entrances as they keep an eye out for predators. Hawks, coyotes and rattlesnakes are among the creatures hoping to make an unsuspecting prairie dog its dinner.
Deserts
Four desert ecosystems can be found in North America, and the park closest to a major metro area offers among the best spots to see wildlife of these dry climes. Outside of Tucson, Ariz., Saguaro National Park’s Douglas Spring Trail crosses the Rincon Mountain District (Saguaro Park East), providing the chance to see coyotes, roadrunners, jackrabbits and quail. All four of those creatures thrive in the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across Arizona and northern Mexico, as well as good portions of the continent’s other three desert ecosystems.
Temperate forests
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, though stretching across the Appalachian Mountains, offers the opportunity to see many of the animals that reside in temperate forests covering much of the continent east of the Mississippi River. The Deep Creek/Indian Falls trails in the park’s North Carolina section sports Eastern cottontail rabbit, groundhogs, river otter, and white-tailed deer. Also present but much more elusive, as they keep to themselves, are black bear, bobcat, coyote, red fox, red wolf, and wild boar.
About the author:
Rob Bignell is the author of several hiking books, including the bestselling “Best Sights to See at America’s National Parks.”
Doreen T. ~ Well Coach-Net saves the day again. All I can say that we will be life-long members. The staff is wonderful and the service is top notch. They don’t rest until your problem is solved and ours was a challenge. Thank you Coach-Net!! We will pass on the accolades
It seems that no matter how many times we visit national parks we learn something new. And Gettysburg National Military Park is a good example. Our second visit here, and four ranger-led walks and talks later, we develop a new appreciation and understanding for what went on in this battlefield to end all battlefields.
It’s summertime, and there’s almost no better place to be than the beach. The warmth of the sun upon your face, the sound of waves splashing against the shore, the blue water stretching into the horizon…Let’s go!
In this year of celebrating the 100th anniversary of America’s national park system, which park among the 59 wilderness parks would you name as the best.
so as you move through this massive park, you get to experience them all. Which, of course, makes for simply spectacular fall colors
of one kind or another. Yet due to the diligence of the rangers and volunteers, the wildlife remains just that – wild.
Horseback riding is offered on both the Tennessee and the North Carolina sides.
And the icing on the cake – if you have the strength and stamina – is to combine it all in one superb hike to LeConte Lodge. There you’ll get history, lodging in basic cabins (no electricity or running water), great food to fuel you for the trip down, unique terrain and trees and fauna, mountaintop views you’ll store in your memory bank forever. Plus you’ll step across creeks and endless cascading water, grab onto cables alongside steep cliffs, and maybe even get to see mountain laurel and rhododendrons blooming at Inspiration Point on the way up. Time it right and the falcons will be flying as a complement to the other colorful birds that hang out there.
Nothing quite so effectively displays Mother Nature’s beauty than a sunrise or sunset, those few moments each day when the world shines golden and with incredible serenity.
Day hikers can walk to one of the first spots where the sun touches America each morning via the South Ridge Trail in Maine’s Acadia National Park. The trail is a 7.2-miles round trip to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is the highest summit on the Eastern seaboard. Though the hike would be done in the dark, with moonglow and flashlights, the trail is traversable. Acadia’s ancient granite peaks are among the first places in the United States where the sunrise can be seen. Be sure to bring a blanket to lay out on the cold rock and take a seat looking southeast.
Fairyland really does exist – it’s smack dab in south central Utah, where a maze of totem pole-like rock formations called hoodoos grace Bryce Canyon National Park. Hoodoos are unusual landforms in which a hard caprock slows the erosion of the softer mineral beneath it. The result is a variety of fantastical shapes. Take the Queens Garden Trail, which descends into the fantasyland of hoodoos. When hiking during the early morning, sunrise’s orange glow magically lights the trail’s contours.
About 1 million Mexican Freetail bats live in Carlsbad Caverns. During the day, they rest on the ceiling of Bat Cave, a passageway closed to the public. At sunset, to feed for the evening, the bats dramatically swarm out of the cave in a tornadic-like spiral, their silhouettes stretching into the distant horizon. An open-air amphitheater allows visitors to safely watch the bats’ departure in an event called The Night Flight. The Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail, a half-mile loop, also allows you to watch the bats disperse across the New Mexican desert.
Among the Grand Canyon National Park’s most spectacular sights – sunrise and sunset – can be seen within walking distance of Grand Canyon Village in Arizona. While the South Rim Trail extends several miles along the canyon edge, you only have to walk to Mather Point, where views of the canyon shift like pictures in a marquee at both sunrise and sunset. Another great spot that’s a little less crowded is Ooh Ahh Point on the South Kaibab Trail, which is east of the village and south of Yaki Point. The aptly named Ooh Ahh Point is less than 200 feet below the rim.
You can enjoy views of sunrises and sunsets covering up to a hundred miles on the Clingmans Dome Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At 6625 feet, Clingmans Dome is the highest point in Tennessee and along the Appalachian Trail, as well as the third tallest east of the Mississippi. A half-mile trip leads to the summit. How incredible are the sunsets? They can be crowded, as those hoping to photograph the stunning scenery line up 45 minutes before the sun descends.
A full 95 percent of Florida’s Biscayne National Park sits underwater, a turquoise blue paradise laced with vividly colored coral reefs – and nothing quite says romance like a sunset over this tropical ocean. Adams Key offers a quarter-mile trail from the dock through the hardwood hammock on the island’s west side; most of the route skirts the beach, where the sunset can be enjoyed.
Clambering over boulders and ambling across strangely angled slickrock – and watching needles aglow at sunset – await on Canyonlands National Park’s Slickrock Trail in southeastern Utah. The 2.9-mile loop trail generally follows a mesa rim. Plan to walk the trail about an hour or so before sunset; on the final mile, tall thin rock formations called needles fill the horizon, glowing crimson as the sun sets.
Nothing quite demonstrates the awesome power and beauty of Mother Nature like a waterfall – hundreds of gallons of water rushing several stories over a cliffside, the vertical stream nestled in lush greenery, the mist and droplets that splash on you at the fall’s base.
Not many travelers have heard of Tokopah Falls, but it’s an incredible site. A series of cascades, it drops 1200 feet – almost the height of the Empire State Building – at California’s Sequoia National Park. It’s a park of tall trees and tall waterfalls.
You can enjoy this waterfall and then a vista at 7200 feet elevation on Grand Teton National Parks’ Hidden Falls-Inspiration Point Trail. The trail runs 3.8-miles round trip into Cascade Canyon. Though technically not a waterfall but a series of cascades running 200 feet over several multiple steps, Wyoming’s Hidden Falls still impresses.
A trail through a lush, old growth forest that ends at this waterfall will delight anyone hiking the Marymere Falls Trail at Olympic National Park in Washington. The 1.6-mile round trip trail really is like taking two entirely different hikes in one. Most of the trail heads through a intensely green Pacific Northwest rain forest while the last portion at the destination is purely about the waterfalls.
This 65-foot waterfalls awaits visitors on the Brandywine Gorge Trail at Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The Brandywine Gorge Trail loops 1.5 miles to the falls then back to the trailhead with several crossings of Brandywine Creek.
From rare California poppies to sweet-scented phlox, wildflowers begin to bloom this month across much of the country. Filling green meadows, desert basins, and forest floors, wildflowers bring a special beauty that usually can only be seen for a few weeks.
Each spring, brilliant orange California poppies, lavender-colored bush lupine, and white mariposa lilies blossom across the nation’s newest national park. To see a variety of them at different elevations and from a number of vistas, take the High Peaks and Bear Gulch trails.
From late June through early August, summer wildflower blooms are at their peak. Check out the Swiftcurrent Lake Loop Trail for meadows strewn with purple asters, white torch-shaped clusters of beargrass, and sun yellow glacier lilies, all with majestic mountains as a backdrop.
Amid the high desert is an oasis of summer wildflowers on the Alpine Lakes Trail. Spring-fed Lehman Creek flows into a lake and supports Parry’s primrose, penstemon, and phlox, all set against vibrant green grass. Butterflies are abundant here as well.
You can enjoy views of up to a hundred miles atop one of the highest points east of the Mississippi River. The 1-mile round trip Clingmans Dome Trail heads to the highest spot in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Tennessee and the third tallest east of the Mississippi. The top rewards with an incredible 360 degree panorama. A verdant spruce-fir forest sits at the ridge tops while in autumn the leaves of hardwoods below adds swaths of harvest colors. On clear days, 100-mile views are possible.
Perhaps the most fantastic vista in all of North America is the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Indeed, the Grand Canyon rightly defies description. Most who see it for the first time say it reminds them of a majestic painting, appropriately suggesting it’s a place that only can be visualized by actually gazing at it. While the South Rim Trail extends several miles along the canyon edge, a short section east of the El Tovar Hotel offers the best views. You’ll be able to see the Colorado River a mile below and an array of incredible buttes, towers and ridges and that stretch up to 10 miles away on the canyon’s other side.
Two sweeping views of Yosemite Valley await on the Sentinel Dome and Taft Point Loop. Located south of the valley along Glacier Point Road, the trail runs 4.9-miles. Taft Point allows you to get right up to the edge of the valley rim, offering magnificent views of Yosemite Valley below and Yosemite Fall (the tallest in North America) and El Capitan across the way. The 360 degree views from the top of Sentinel Dome – which peaks at 8127 feet – are the hike’s highlight. Among the visible sights are Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, North Dome, and Basket Dome.
The multi-colored Grand Prismatic Spring and an array of geysers can be seen on the first 0.6 miles of Yellowstone’s Fairy Falls Trail. A 400-foot stretch of the trail appropriately known as Picture Hill provides a grand vista of the spring. About 370 feet in diameter, Grand Prismatic is the largest hot spring in the United States and the third largest in the world. It reaches a depth of 121 feet. Be sure to bring polarized sunglasses. By wearing them, you can see the spring’s rainbow colors reflected in the steam rising off the water. The smaller Excelsior Geyser Crater sits beyond the geological wonder.
You can hike past hoodoos to a vista that affords a fantastic view of Zion National Park’s famous Beehives, East Temple, the Streaked Wall, and the Towers of the Virgin, on the Canyon Overlook Trail. The 1-mile round trip of pinnacles, arches and domes feels like a walk on an alien world straight out of a science fiction film. The trail can be taken any summer day, but temps are cooler in the morning and late evening.
Park Point, Mesa Verde’s highest spot at 8572 feet above sea level with 360 degree views, is often touted as the most impressive vista in the United States. The 0.5-mile round trip Park Point Overlook Trail takes you to the view of Montezuma and Mancos valleys, and on a clear day, you can see four states – Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Add 0.5-miles round trip to the fire lookout tower for additional great views.
Another major project rehabilitates the opening mile of the 8.5-mile Bright Angel Trail at Grand Canyon National Park. The segment of the trail to the Mile-and-a-half Resthouse, which descends 1063 feet into the canyon, is a popular day hike despite the steep route. Cost of the improvement is $1.3 million.
The Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point Bridges on Grand Teton National Park’s Jenny Lake Trail are slated for replacement. The national park’s most visited destination, the trail at the base of the mountains heads to a 200-foot waterfall and a stunning vista at 7200 feet elevation.
Glacier National Park plans to improve the first mile of the popular Highline Trail beginning at its Logan Pass trailhead. The trail, accessible from the Going-to-the-Sun Road, offers incredible vistas as it follows the Continental Divide along a high rock cliff known as the Garden Wall.
Those visiting the Washington national park will find improvements on several trails, including the Skyline, Pebble Creek, Golden Gate, Glacier Vista, and Dead Horse Creek trails. Many of those trails offer great views of Mount Rainier, which is the fourth highest peak in the United States.
It’s time to celebrate! The National Park Service turns 100 on August 25, 2016. In honor of this amazing year, we are launching a 12-part series dedicated to the enjoyment and beauty of our glorious national parks. Stay tuned each month as we continue the celebration with park highlights, destination ideas, and general good-to-know information.
The Act of March 1, 1872 established Yellowstone National Park as a public park. This founding created a worldwide park movement. Following the establishment of Yellowstone, the United States authorized additional national parks and monuments. Some were administered by the Department of the Interior while others were administered by the War Department and the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture. But, no single agency managed the various par
The National Park System receives over 280,000,000 visits each year and visitation is continuing to grow. According to the 2014 Annual Park Ranking Report for Recreation Visitors, the ten most visited areas of the National Park Service handle 28% of the visits to the 400+ park areas. The #1 ranked national park is the Golden Gate National Recreation Area with over 15 million, followed in 2nd by the