America's 60 national parks are beloved around the world for their inspiring natural beauty and unmatched diversity. They can also be places to reconnect with God and the sacred. National parks engage our five senses, but engaging a sixth sense, the sense of the holy, will transform your national park experience.
In America's Holy Ground: 60 Faithful Reflections on Our National Parks, dive deeper into a unique aspect of each park, from Acadia to Zion, and reframe how you think about the parks and your faith. Connections, sabbath, reflection, perspective, beginnings, art, restoration - these are just a few of the themes you'll encounter on your national park journey. A trio of questions with each entry will help you see the bigger picture of your life and new ways to approach your relationship with God, your community, and your faith.
Our national parks are beautiful and unique places, often serving as an introduction to the outdoors and inspiring an appreciation for nature and wilderness. Similarly, stories and storytelling can serve as an introduction to other places and foster a powerful emotional connection to nature. Campfire Stories brings together tales about our national parks; some are by well-known writers such as John Muir, Bill Bryson, and Terry Tempest Williams, while others are from pioneer diaries or have been passed down through generations of indigenous peoples.
Co-editors Dave and Ilyssa Kyu spent five months traveling and researching the stories in the book. They gathered each of these stories from public libraries, historical societies, arts and cultural organizations, museums, research centers, and national park archives.
A bracing memoir about self-discovery, liberating escape, and moving forward across an adventurous and volatile American landscape. One year. One national park at a time.This is it. No more California. I'm sifting into the underbelly of where the nomads go.
After a decade as an assistant to high-powered LA executives, Emily Pennington left behind her structured life and surrendered to the pull of the great outdoors. With a tight budget, meticulous routing, and a temperamental minivan she named Gizmo, Emily embarked on a yearlong road trip to sixty-two national parks, hell-bent on a single goal: getting through the adventure in one piece. She was instantly thrust into more chaos than she'd bargained for and found herself on an unpredictable journey rocked by a gutting romantic breakup, a burgeoning pandemic, wildfires, and other seismic challenges that threatened her safety, her sanity, and the trip itself.
Combining the popularity of ghost stories with the traditional aspects of a park trail guide, these creepy hikes lead courageous climbers and armchair adventurers through some of the scariest, most mysterious places in North America. Thoroughly investigated, yet often tongue-in-cheek, these tales behind the trails include the chupacabra that roams the swamps inside the Big Thicket National Preserve, the execution-style shooting of two General Motors executives at Crater Lake, and the pair of disembodied legs that have been seen running around inside the Mammoth Cave Visitor Center.
A fright factor rating is listed for each hike, along with information on trailhead access, maps, and hike difficulty levels. From the wheelchair accessible to multi-day treks into the wilderness, the included trails cover a wide range of hiking abilities and even feature a haunted Louisiana bayou best reached by canoe or kayak.
America's national parks are breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why more than 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the environmental classic Refuge and the beloved memoir When?Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks, an exploration of what they mean to us and what we mean to them.
From the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas and more, Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and a manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America.
Many childhood summers, Mark Woods piled into a station wagon with his parents and two sisters and headed to America's national parks. Mark's most vivid childhood memories are set against a backdrop of mountains, woods, and fireflies in places like Redwood, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon national parks. On the eve of turning fifty and a little burned-out, Mark decided to reconnect with the great outdoors. He'd spend a year visiting the national parks. He planned to take his mother to a park she'd not yet visited and to re-create his childhood trips with his wife and their iPad-generation daughter. But then the unthinkable happened: his mother was diagnosed with cancer, given just months to live. Mark had initially intended to write a book about the future of the national parks, but Lassoing the Sun grew into something more: a book about family, the parks, the legacies we inherit and the ones we leave behind.
Striking photos and personal, experiential stories lure park rookies and obsessives alike to the rustic charm of America's National Park lodges.
Max Humphrey shines a light on 10 rustic National Park lodges in all their airy, timeworn splendor. No historic photos here; the images of the architecture and interiors are as they look today, highlighting these storied places in a fresh, alluring way. Sure, the lobbies are the main stage, but Humphrey touches on grand dining rooms, guest rooms, and rustic canteens alike. He writes about the buildings themselves in terms of the historical goings-on at the time, why they were built, and the players involved, highlighting notable architectural moments and period-specific furnishings. A smattering of pop culture history adds extra bursts of levity throughout.
A perfectly packaged, awe inspiring tour of America's 60 National Parks complete with Rand McNally maps, stunning photography, park highlights, lodging options, and tips for hitting the road. This gem of a book showcases America's adventurous spirit and its astonishing beauty, park after amazing park presented in alphabetical offer.
This fun-filled guide shares an exciting scavenger hunt for every American National Park - featuring natural history factoids and fun and educational ways to get kids engaged with nature..
Turn every trip into an outdoor adventure for the whole family with these fun-filled scavenger hunts! The National Parks Scavenger Hunt is a great travel companion, as it encourages the whole family to enjoy the sights as they learn about the most majestic of American landscapes.
With lists of 5-12 objects for each park, kids can look for, discover, and truly absorb fun and educational facts about each park. To keep it challenging, some of the parks' iconic features are listed alongside lesser-known gems - like off-the-beaten path waterfalls, harlequin ducks, and regional wildflowers.
Historian Wallace Stegner characterized America's National Park system as "the best idea we ever had." One can quibble with that, but, indeed, it was a pretty good idea! This book specifically is a guide and a celebration of 30 of those national parks, national historical parks, and national monuments that, each in its own way, reveals the histories and cultures of America's first inhabitants, the Native Americans.
Its pages will take you to: great mounds in Ohio where the dead were laid to rest in sumptuous splendor 2,000 years agoa place in Iowa where 1,000 years ago, Native Americans sculpted earth into the forms of giant bears and birdsa quarry in Minnesota where Native People have, for hundreds of years, extracted blood-red stone for their ceremonial pipesthe remains of a village in North Dakota visited by Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s and the home of their guide Sacageweatruly breathtaking, more than 700-year-old cliff dwellings in Arizona and Colorado, that will astonish you in their ethereal beauty and architectural ingenuity.
For twelve years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it.
In this graphic and yet surprisingly funny account of her and others' extraordinary careers, Lankford unveils a world in which park rangers struggle to maintain their idealism in the face of death, disillusionment, and the loss of a comrade killed while holding that thin green line between protecting the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from each other.
In his enthusiastic explorations and fervent writing, Michael J. Yochim "was to Yellowstone what Muir was to Yosemite. . . . Other times, his writing is like that of Edward Abbey, full of passion for the natural world and anger at those who are abusing it," writes foreword contributor William R. Lowry.
In 2013 Yochim was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) . While fighting the disease, he wrote Requiem for America's Best Idea. The book establishes a unique parallel between Yochim's personal struggle with a terminal illness and the impact climate change is having on the national parks--the treasured wilderness that he loved and to which he dedicated his life.Yochim explains how climate change is already impacting the vegetation, wildlife, and the natural conditions in Olympic, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Yellowstone, and Yosemite National Parks.
Subpar Parks, both on the popular Instagram page and in this humorous, informative, and collectible book, combines two things that seem like they might not work together yet somehow harmonize perfectly: beautiful illustrations and informative, amusing text celebrating each national park paired with the one-star reviews disappointed tourists have left online.
Millions of visitors each year enjoy Glacier National Park, but for one visitor, it was simply "Too cold for me!" Another saw the mind-boggling vistas of Bryce Canyon as "Too spiky!" Never mind the person who visited the thermal pools at Yellowstone National Park and left thinking, "Save yourself some money, boil some water at home."
Featuring more than 50 percent new material, the book will include more depth and insight into the most popular parks, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Acadia National Parks; anecdotes and tips from rangers; and much more about author Amber Share's personal love and connection to the outdoors.
Smart, short, and irresistibly illustrated, This Is a Book for People Who Love National Parks is a park-by-park celebration of the American outdoors!
For devoted park-goers and casual campers alike, this charming guide is nothing short of a celebration of America's natural wonders.
An introduction to the storied history of the Parks Service is paired with engaging profiles of each of the 61 National Parks, from Acadia to Zion and everything in between. Quirky facts and key dates are woven throughout, while refreshingly modern illustrations capture the iconic features of each majestic setting. Deeply researched, but not too serious, This Is a Book for People Who Love National Parks is an essential addition to every park-lover's field library.
A?guide to the nation's great?national parks?and their best hikes, ranging from short day hikes to backpacking treks and featuring scenic vistas, waterfalls, and information on lodging opportunities. Includes color photographs throughout.
Nick Offerman has always felt a particular affection for the Land of the Free, not just for the people and their purported ideals but to the actual land itself: the bedrock, the topsoil, and everything in between that generates the health of your local watershed. In his new book, Nick takes a humorous, inspiring, and elucidating trip to America's trails, farms, and frontier to examine the people who inhabit the land, what that has meant to them and us, and to the land itself, both historically and currently.
In 2018, Wendell Berry posed a question to Nick, a query that planted the seed of this book, sending Nick on two memorable journeys with palsa hiking trip to Glacier National Park with his friends Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders, as well as an extended visit to his friend James Rebanks, the author of The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral. He followed that up with an excursion that could only have come about in 2020. Nick and his wife, Megan Mullally, bought an Airstream trailer to drive across (several of) the United States. These three quests inspired some deep-ish" thinking from Nick, about the history and philosophy of our relationship with nature in our national parks, in our farming, and in our backyards; what we mean when we talk about conservation; and the importance of outdoor recreation, all subjects very close to Nick's heart. With witty, heartwarming stories and a keen insight into the human problems we all confront, this is both a ramble through and celebration of the land we all love.
Featuring 300 of the best camping and glamping spots in and around national parks, seashores, monuments, and more!
The national parks of the United States have been called "America's best idea," and some of the best camping and glamping experiences our country has to offer can be found in and around National Park Service units, including national parks, seashores, monuments, lakeshores, and battlegrounds.
In Where Should We Camp Next?: National Parks, family camping and RV experts Stephanie and Jeremy Puglisi take you beyond Yellowstone and Yosemite to the hidden gems of the National Park Service to help you plan a truly unique vacation. Whether you're camping close to home or gathering ideas for an epic American road trip, the in-depth profiles of more than three hundred amazing outdoor accommodation destinations in fifty National Park Service units will help you find the best places to park your RV, pitch your tent, or explore creative and memorable glamping opportunities.
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