A hogback running nearly 100 miles (161 km) north and south through central Utah is the defining spine of Capitol Reef National Park, but this ruddy landscape offers many more geologic and cultural wonders.

Travel to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico and you'll arrive at a landscape with more than 100 caves, have the opportunity to witness thousands of bats take flight into the Chihuahuan Desert, marvel at the beauty of ancient sea ledges and acid-dissolved limestone, and walk down what's been called “the road to hell.” 

Born of cataclysmic fire and cooled by rain and snow, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon is a geological and scenic wonder that never fails to awe. You can drive around the lake rim, enjoy the night sky above the lake, camp, hike, lodge and learn at Crater Lake.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio is surrounded by the urban areas of Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. You are close to civilization, yet that nearness seems to fade into the background as you wander along the shores of the Cuyahoga River and explore sun-and-shadow-dappled forests opening out onto wildflower-blanketed wetlands and meadows.

Never mind the heat (although, Death Valley does lay claim to the highest officially recorded temperature on Earth.) It's the geology that captures your mind as you roam this sprawling national park. The sand dunes. The eroded hillsides and carved canyons. The alluvial fans  painted scarlet, lemon, orange and purple with wildflowers after wet winters.

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska, a landscape covering over 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares), through which runs a single dirt and gravel road. It takes a bit of planning to get to this park, but if Denali is on your bucket list, that planning is worth the time and effort.

When you were a child, did dinosaurs fascinate you? Even as adults, dinosaurs and fossils still exert a hold on our imagination. During a visit to Dinosaur National Monument, you can indulge both your inner child and adult curiosity about these “terrible lizards” by actually seeing fossils still embedded in the rock.

Though a harbor for the country's greatest collection of tidewater glaciers, Glacier Bay National Park is more than just ice and water.

The park's 3.3 million acres (1.3 million hectares) offer the adventuresome opportunities to trek through temperate rain forests, climb snow- and ice-covered mountains, paddle hundreds of miles, and experience the ruggedness of a landscape that John Muir described as "a magnificent picture of nature's power and industry..."

Sweeping, grandiose landscapes are a staple of many of the West's iconic national parks, and among those Glacier easily stands out when you look from horizon to horizon atop Logan Pass.

A colorful rift in the earth millions of years -- and immeasurable gallons of water -- in the making, the jagged maw of the Grand Canyon draws crowds content enough to simply stare across this impressive cross-section of geology from either the South or North rim of its namesake national park.