Gem of the Northwest, Olympic National Park offers a spectacular trifecta of national park settings.

Threads of the Late Triassic Period more than 200 million years ago run rampant through Petrified Forest National Park, and not just in the trunks of stone trees that dot this multi-hued landscape in northeastern Arizona.

Teasing those threads out, though, takes a keen eye, and time. Unfortunately, the park road runs just 28 miles (40 km) through its 93,532 acres (37,851 hectares), so unless you exhibit some discipline you'll cruise down the pavement, stop momentarily at the 22 overlooks, and be gone in a very small number of hours. 

Though worn and rumpled by the passage of time, a gentler, more rounded visage of the towering range of mountains they were in their youth, the Blue Ridge Mountains that shoulder Shenandoah National Park are no less worthy of inspection.

The backwoods and hollows that worm their way through the Appalachians overflow with rich stories of settlers who literally hacked their homes out of the forests, dug rocks out of the ground for their fence lines, and left behind orchards that continue to bear fruit for both bears and humans.

When a young Theodore Roosevelt came west in the 1880s, he encountered a landscape unlike any he had set his eyes on. The rippled badlands of the Dakota Territory, cut and carved through the millennia by the Little Missouri River, were stark and barren, and yet inviting to the young man.

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.

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.