The best national parks in the USA

Already valued at an estimated $185 billion, the worldwide ecotourism segment is expected to exceed $374 billion in global impact within the decade.

Visiting at night and taking free public transportation are just two of the ways the National Park Service is encouraging visitors to go green.

The chance to spot a bear, bison, or bald eagle in the wild is one of the major reasons travelers visit the United States’ 63 national parks. You might assume that a megafauna mecca like Yellowstone National Park would offer the best odds of seeing multiple animals. 

The esteemed Dr. Beach has released his annual list of America’s top ten beaches, and you’ll want to visit all of them this summer—doctors orders.

When the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) proposed drastic hikes to admission fees last fall, the reaction was swift and negative. It seems the NPS heard what people will saying.

Glacier National Park is one of the most gorgeous parks in the national park system. The sprawling park is in northern Montana and is home to some of the oldest glaciers in the US — not to mention wildlife like grizzly and brown bears, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, pumas, wolves, elk, moose, and more. The park has gorgeous day hikes running between half a mile or 20 miles, and some of the best backcountry backpacking in the US. You can even hike from the US into Waterton Lakes National Park, the attached national park just on the other side of the US-Canada border.

Tsingy National Park (full name: The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park) is a national park in Madagascar. The name “tsingy” comes from a Malagasy word meaning “walking on tiptoes,” which is an apt description of the landscape of the park. It is known for its unique karst formations, formed by rain that dissolved the soft limestone over time, creating sharp, rocky spires.

American trains are not the fastest in the world. They also severely lack the network of tracks necessary for people to ditch their cars or forego flying to rely on them entirely for their domestic travel needs.

Big Bend National Park shares a border with Mexico in a stunning stretch of southwestern Texas, where evenings are defined by orange skies reflecting against red-rock canyons.  While such stunning scenes are commonplace within Big Bend, the massive desert preserve remains overlooked among US national parks. It’s never had more than 500,000 visitors in a single year since it was made a national park in 1944, making it one of the least-visited parks in the lower 48.

Winter may not seem like the ideal time to visit the wilds of a national park, but really there’s no bad time to enjoy the beauty of America’s public lands. Some national parks in temperate or even tropical climates are better to visit in winter when they’re free from the scalding heat of summer. If you don’t mind the potential for a bit of snow, you’ll enjoy relative quiet in some of the larger parks visited en masse during warmer months.

Abutting the US border with Canada, North Cascades National Park is a land of contrasts. Cerulean blue lakes sit at the foot of mountains forested in deep green pines, with their peaks capped in snow and pointing to the heavens. The park mirrors the various landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, shifting from mountainous areas dominated by rain showers and heavy snowfall to arid plateaus cut by glaciers since melted into alpine rivers and lakes. The park is remote, accessible only by the beautiful North Cascades Highway or from hiking trails to the north.

Spanning across more than 800,000 acres, Joshua Tree National Park is where two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and Colorado, meet, resulting in an incredibly diverse array of flora and fauna. The Southern California park takes its name from the Joshua Tree, a peculiar and beautiful species of yucca that dots the landscape with its spiky, outstretched branches. But the trees are just the beginning. Joshua Tree National Park is also renowned for its striking rock formations, carved over thousands of years by harsh winds and rains. The special landscape is best enjoyed at a leisurely pace. There’s a lot to see here, so opting for a hotel nearby offers you easy access first thing in the morning and at night too. It’s worth noting that the region is a magical place for stargazing and you can drive into the park when the sun goes down to join a tour, or simply enjoy the night sky independently. There are various accommodation options from outstanding Airbnbs and a handful of hotels near Joshua Tree National Park.