National Parks Traveler

According to the National Park Service, "Due to its exceptional night skies and efforts to mitigate light pollution, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was designated as an International Dark Sky Park in 2015."

How about a little throwback this week of National Park images captured in past years. The year for this image is unknown, but given the vintage make of these vehicles (Model T's?), it looks like the 1930s - 1940s. This is the Lehman Caves Visitor Center and all these cars are parked while their occupants take a tour of Lehman Caves, the longest cave system in the state of Nevada and located in Great Basin National Park.

Although all the roads in Lassen Volcanic National Park are closed for the winter, with the exception of a little bit on both north and south ends of the scenic park highway, that doesn't mean getting out and enjoying winter in this national park is not possible. Visitors in the winter will enjoy solitude and no crowds and can sled, snowshoe, and ski over the snow-blanketed landscape.

Because of very strong solar storms, the Aurora Borealis was showing up in national parks further south than usually seen, such as at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. The human eye cannot always detect an aurora in dim light and a camera with a very slow shutter speed and a wide aperture often captures what the naked eye does not see.

According to the National Park Service:

"Pinnacles Overlook has sweeping views and faces South, making it a great sunset destination. This view displays the expanse of the Sage Creek Wilderness area. On clear days, the Black Hills are visible on the horizon. Bison might be visible in the distance, in the valley below or the upper prairie to the northwest. This overlook is also a popular spot for Bighorn sheep to gather. This is also a lambing area for Bighorn sheep in late April to early May, so it’s not unusual to see lambs traversing the rocky slopes of the Badlands."

"Sulphur Works hydrothermal area sits at the center of a wide basin surrounded by towering volcanic peaks. Geologists have determined that the encircling peaks (Brokeoff Mountain, Mount Diller, Pilot Pinnacle, and Mount Conard) are all remnants of a large, eroded volcano called Brokeoff Volcano, or Mount Tehama."

"Sulphur Works is a vent for the last rumblings of a long-dead volcano and yet it is also reborn each day as forces of erosion and hydrothermal activity continuously alter the landscape. Although named after the chemical element of sulfur—which is a byproduct of the hydrothermal system—the area bears the British English spelling of the word assigned by a pioneer that once laid claim to what was then known as Supan's Sulphur Works."

The proximity of Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota is within the geographic center of the continent. This blend of prairie and forest ecosystems provide homes to over 100 bird species found within the park, and you might find birds from both the east and west side of the country, like the red-headed woodpecker or the black-billed magpie. You might also see birds in this national park with combined eastern and western markings, like the northern Flicker, which will usually have the black mustache stripe of a flickr from the eastern part of the country, and also the orange or red feathers of a flickr found in the western portion of the country.

Within park boundaries exists the nation's largest glacial system, with glaciers covering 35 percent of the parklands. Some glaciers do not look pristine like you might picture them. Those brown lines you see in the photo are medial moraines. According to the National Park Service:

Medial moraines form where two tributary glaciers come together. They are generally surficial features on the ice and often consist of rock that has fallen from a rockwall where the glaciers converge. Because they are thin, surficial features, medial moraines are rarely preserved after the ice retreats.

The Great Kobuk Sand Dunes in Kobuk Valley National Park are the largest active sand dunes in the Arctic. Along with the smaller Little Kobuk Sand Dunes and Hunt River Sand Dunes, the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes create 30 square miles (77.7 sq km) of towering sand 35 miles (56 km) above the Arctic Circle.