If you’re wondering how to choose the best national park for your next RV adventure, you’re not alone. We were clueless too when our full-time RVing life began in 2007. But after one giant boulder collision, several tree branch sideswipes, and 12 years traveling, we’ve got national park RV camping logistics down to a science. Here’s your chance to learn from our early blunders with foolproof tips for a flawless getaway.

Whether you’re traveling by car or by jeep, the approaches to Utah’s Canyonlands National Park rank among the most scenic in the West. Following Utah Highway 211 down Indian Creek Canyon into the Needles District, or jouncing along a rugged backcountry route into the park’s western side, you’re witness to geologic processes acting on a vast scale. There’s another entrance to Canyonlands, though, which runs at river level, and this is the one my wife and I like best. This spring Bessann and I steered our canoe down the Green River into the northern end of the park, heading for its confluence with the Colorado River 50 miles downstream. It was a slower approach, one which let us savor the sights and sounds along one of the Southwest’s great desert waterways.

Water defines the arid West. Sporadic and intermittent water - think flash floods, freeze/thaw and steady erosion - sculpts the landscape, but it takes permanent water to create conditions for human settlement. At Pipe Spring National Monument in northern Arizona, the Park Service has done an exemplary job of telling the human water story from three perspectives: Paiutes, the original inhabitants; Mormons, a big wave of Anglo settlers that stayed; and the U.S. government.

When someone says the word, “Alabama,” what do you imagine? For most, the melody of “Sweet Home Alabama” pops into their head, or scenes from the movie by the same name. For me, most of what I pictured stemmed from the popular television show “Hart of Dixie” about a young doctor moving to the state in search of a mystery father – not exactly based on reality. What I didn’t know until I moved into the next-door Florida Panhandle was that Alabama is an ecologically diverse, beautiful state, stretching from sugar-sand coastline to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

White Sands National Monument in New Mexico doesn’t have the elevation of Great Sand Dunes – most of the dunes we hiked on were well under 100 feet high – but it is no less of a cool place. Nestled into the Tularosa Basin just east of Las Cruces, New Mexico, this 275 square miles of white gypsum sand is the largest of its kind in the world.

It's not easy to visit Kobuk Valley National Park in Alaska -- you need to take a small plane or river boat to reach it -- but the trek is well worth it if you enjoy sand dunes.

The setting -- North America's tallest sand dunes against a backdrop of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains -- makes Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve both unusual and spectacular.

When I designed the itinerary for my road trip move from Texas to Washington, last summer, I worked on several different routes to take me to national parks I’d never photographed but which are still within a relatively straight shot to central Washington. No matter which route I planned, they all had one thing in common: a stop at Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Considered an “open-air geologic textbook” in a past Traveler article, Petrified Forest is a less-visited gem filled with all sorts of colorful photographic possibilities, right off Interstate 40.

There is a place where you can escape the crowds at Acadia National Park and find solitude in the dramatic setting of coastal Maine. Contributing writer Kim O'Connell was fortunate enough to immerse herself in Isle au Haut for five glorious days.

Kids of all ages love dinosaurs. As a six-year-old, I remember playing with plastic dinosaurs with names like Brontosaurus, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus Rex and imagining about 100 million years ago when those big reptiles walked the earth. It kept me occupied for hours. A recent visit to Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah rekindled my childhood dinosaur interest.

What the Eastern part of our great country lacks in iconic landscape parks - Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, or Yosemite - it makes up for with important historic and cultural parks that are equally as iconic in their own way. As the only national park unit dedicated to American painting, Weir Farm fits that bill.

Lodging can be hard to come by in the National Park System depending on the season you want to book a room for. It's also a little harder because some lodges have disappeared from the parks down through the decades. Do you remember the Echo Bay Resort? David and Kay Scott take a look back at some of those places.

An agreement to produce a guide to national park lodges turned into a 20-year odyssey for David and Kay Scott as they crisscrossed the National Park System time and again to update that guide.

Bears -- big, brash coastal brown bears -- often are what most comes to mind when there's mention of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. And that's understandable thanks to the Brooks River and the bear viewing opportunities there. But if that's all you consider when researching a trip to this national park, you'll kick yourself later.

I sat on the top of a slope, the bright orange, plastic sled firmly beneath me. My senses felt overloaded, confused, not only by the spectacularly beautiful scenery surrounding White Sands National Monument but also the conflicting memories the desert evokes. I planned to sled down one of the bright white dunes, decked out in a winter coat, hat, and scarf - evoking winter. Yet I planned to sled on sand, reminding me of summer, the beach, my hometown in Florida. Kicking my legs forward, I began to move, faster and faster and faster as the white hills sped by me. Joy bubbled up, erupting in a high-pitched squeal reminiscent of my childhood.

This year took National Parks Traveler contributors to parks – near and far, big and small – that showcase the diversity and history of our planet. The Traveler took readers to Chile, Portugal, and Tanzania. A little closer to home, follow a daring journey into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska, which, at 13.2 million acres, is the largest national park in the United States, or tag along with Jim Stratton on his trip to smaller, lesser-known units of the National Park System.

Winter is a cold, snowy, and decidedly solitary season at Voyageurs National Park, where fellow visitors can be hard to spot. Take December 2017, for instance. The park recorded just 110 visitors, down from 196 a year earlier. But if you relish skimming through the woods on skis or snowmobiles, like to study tracks of what crossed the meadows and frozen ponds, or crave to see the dancing Northern Lights overhead, well, a visit to Voyageurs should be given serious consideration.

Our forefathers were fiendish, hellish, you might even say devilish. Need proof? Look at the maps and the names of many of the places we visit. And then ask yourself, “Why in the Hell are so many places in our Western national parks named after the infernal demon, and his lair?”

Remnants of the past, of poets and artists who sought the stark inspiration offered by isolating, windswept dunes on the outer beaches of Cape Cod, stand weathered gray. Some appear wobbly and are almost hidden by their embracing dunes, while others stand atop the hills of sand with sweeping views out into the Atlantic.

Chris Biela recently took a hike into one of his favorite spots in Redwood National and State Parks: Fern Canyon. His time-lapse video of the 4-mile round trip Tall Trees Trail takes you to Tall Trees Grove, an alluvial flat next to Redwood Creek that hosts a former title-holder of world's tallest tree.