According to the National Park Service:

Just where will that park road take you? Perhaps through the eastern portion of Zion National Park along the Zion-Mt. Carmel Road? You'll drive past ancient, lithified, cross-bedded sand dunes in saturated colors of orange, pink, and beige, on your way toward Checkerboard Mesa.

One of 250 bird species found in the park, More than 20,000 sandhill cranes will spend 6 - 7 weeks each year in the San Luis Valley during their annual migration to southern New Mexico. Look for them in early February through late March, then again in late September through late March.

According to the National Park Service, "The Waterpocket Fold defines Capitol Reef National Park. A nearly 100-mile long warp in the Earth's crust, the Waterpocket Fold is a classic monocline, a "step-up" in the rock layers. It formed between 50 and 70 million years ago when a major mountain building event in western North America, the Laramide Orogeny, reactivated an ancient buried fault in this region. Movement along the fault caused the west side to shift upwards relative to the east side. The overlying sedimentary layers were draped above the fault and formed a monocline.

Johns Hopkins Glacier is found at the end of Johns Hopkins Inlet, in the farthest northwest of the Glacier Bay fjord. The glacier fills the end of the fjord, stretching about 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, and reaching 250 feet (76 m) high above the waterline. The ice front extends under sea level, to a depth of approximately 200 feet (61 m), where an underwater moraine protects the deepest extent of the glacial ice like armor against the warm ocean water.

Perhaps the most iconic of the park's viewpoints, Bryce Point provides a soaring view of the Bryce Amphitheater from the south. Southern Paiutes call this place Unka Tumpi Wun-nux Tungwatsini Xoopakichu Anax, which means "Red Rock Standing Like a Man in a Hole".

To read more about Bryce Point, click here.

In 1880, the government built Fort Spokane at what is now Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Washington state. The fort was constructed to keep the peace between settlers and the Colville and Spokane Indian tribes and ultimately went through three phases before being abandoned and then coming under the management of the National Park Service: military base, Indian boarding school, tuberculosis hospital.

Actually, Sperry Chalet is all set for the 2024 season at Glacier National Park in Montana after being rebuilt from a devastating wildfire in 2017. 

The Chesapeake Bay is home to some special animals. Some are rarely seen, some are downright strange and others have been on the earth for millions of years!

In the early 1900s, paleontologists unearthed the Age of Mammals when they found full skeletons of extinct Miocene mammals in the hills of Nebraska -- species previously only known through fragments.

At the same time, an age of friendship began between rancher James Cook and Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota.

These two unprecedented events are preserved and protected here... at Agate Fossil Beds.