Beaches sparkling white and palm-lined. Warm Caribbean waters tinted turquoise and flecked with darting blue tangs, schools of yellow sergeant majors, and luminescent green parrot fish. Coral reefs swaying in the currents with their fans and given depth and texture by brain, staghorn, and elkhorn corals. These make this national park a tropical paradise.

Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota commemorates those French-Canadian fur traders (voyageurs), the first Europeans to travel through the area with their canoes 250 years ago. Indeed, while there are a few visitor centers and trails that can be reached by car, the best way to explore the 218,000 acres of lakes, rivers, and forests is by boat.

Just 10 minutes east of Flagstaff, Arizona, on a densely forested plateau, the serpentine chasms of Walnut Canyon long ago gave refuge to hundreds of Native Americans. Occupied from approximately 1100 to 1250 CE, the Sinagua people were experts in growing crops and living in an arid environment.

While Wind Cave in Wind Cave National Park is undeniably the star of the show at this park in South Dakota, there is so much more than just the cave. There is wildlife viewing, hiking, geology, and history.

No more iconic park exists in the world than Yellowstone National Park, thanks to its role in launching the national parks movement, its incredible geothermal features, beautiful scenery, and rich fount of wildlife.

As awe-inspiring as the Yosemite Valley is, it is not the length and breadth of Yosemite National Park, but rather only one measure of this High Sierra beaut. Sadly, a surprising number of people never venture out of the valley with its towering granite walls and, in season, wispy waterfalls, to explore the other wonders of the park.

And that's their loss.

"Mukuntuweap"

It doesn't roll as easily off the tongue as does "Zion," but its definition better describes the landscape. It was the name given the colorful redrock canyon and surrounding landscape in southwestern Utah by Major John Wesley Powell, who explored it in 1872 after his journey down the Green and Colorado rivers, an excursion that took him through three other landscapes that today are part of the National Park System.