Our ‘Best of’ Trekking the Planet wallpaper features 46 of our favorite photos from the national parks, national monuments, national memorials and national seashores we visited on our recent journey. The photos in this theme will automatically be rotated every 30 minutes.
We recently completed an interview, summarizing our favorite parks, challenges we faced, what worked well and our final thoughts from our Trekking the Planet National Parks Roadtrip Adventure.
Off the coast of California, between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, lie the Channel Islands. There are eight islands in the 160 mile archipelago, and five of those comprise Channel Islands National Park. Our visit to the 27th and final park on our Trekking the Planet NPS journey was an overnight adventure.
America’s newest national park is Pinnacles, established in 2013, and located about 80 miles southeast of San Jose, California. During our two days in the park we hiked 17.2 miles, scrambled in two talus caves, and scanned the skies for the endangered California condors.
The Cascade Mountains run from south British Columbia to Northern California. The highest Cascades peak is Mount Rainier. At 14,410 feet, it is the fifth tallest mountain in the lower 48 states and the 17th highest in the U.S. We spent time hiking in two popular locations: Sunrise and Paradise.
Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota is the only one of America’s 59 national parks to be named after a person. While in the park, we spent time in all three units, united by the Little Missouri River flowing through them.
Wind Cave, in the southern Black Hills of South Dakota, was created as America’s eighth national park in 1903 and was the first to protect a cave. During the three days we visited, we took two cave tours. We also tracked animals, including bison, along Wind Cave’s backcountry roads.
Seventy five million years ago a shallow sea covered today’s Great Plains area. This sea’s sedimentary layer is just one of the bands of rock comprising today’s Badlands National Park. We spent three days exploring the rock formations and viewing fossils, while hiking on trails under the ancient sea.
In the 18th century, adventurers traveled by canoe on boundary waters between the United States and Canada. Today’s Voyageurs National Park, established in 1975, encompasses 56 miles of the trade route. To best experience this park, we went into the backcountry for 50 hours by foot and paddle.
Lake Superior is the northernmost of the Great Lakes. The largest freshwater lake in the world by area, it is more like an ocean or an inland sea, measuring 350 miles wide and 160 miles long. In its northwest corner lies Isle Royale, the largest island in Lake Superior.
Ohio’s 85 mile long Cuyahoga River flows between Akron and Cleveland and into Lake Erie. By the 20th century, the Cuyahoga River became one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. The sad state of the river culminated when it caught on fire in 1969.
In 1604 French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed along today’s central Maine coast and noted an island that he called “Isle des Monts Deserts” because of the barren appearance of its mountains. Today, Mount Desert Island is the centerpiece of Acadia National Park.
