There are, across the National Park System, dozens and dozens of jewels that don't attract crowds while offering you gorgeous landscapes, deep history, and rich experiences. Here's a look at some of those places that the National Parks Traveler wrote about this year.

Thirty-one species of cacti live in the starkly beautiful Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in the Sonoran Desert, along with bighorn sheep, pronghorns, javelinas, kangaroo rats, rare pupfish and all kinds of reptiles and birds. But the green desert is also home to a 30-mile stretch of America’s steel border wall and warning signs had this traveler anxious that “smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area.”

Author and professor John Elder envisioned the ideals for Vermont’s only national park at the opening of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in 1998, calling it "...an entirely new kind of park. It must be one where the human stories and the natural history are intertwined..."

We had left sunset behind us in the New Mexico village of Cuba and headed up into the Santa Fe National Forest when the cat crossed our path. The splash of the pickup's headlights briefly illuminated the long and sinuous body, with a tail to match, before the mountain lion vanished into the ponderosa pine forest.