National Parks and Monuments
The National Park Service administers both national parks and national monuments. The park service is sadly underfunded, and in style and design most of its visitor centers and other facilities still date conspicuously from the 1950s. Nonetheless, its rangers do a superb job of providing information and advice to visitors, maintaining trails, and organizing such activities as free guided hikes and campfire talks. In principle, a national park preserves an area of outstanding natural beauty, encompassing a wide range of terrain and the very best examples of particular landforms and wildlife. Yellowstone has boiling geysers and herds of elk and bison. Yosemite offers towering granite walls and cascading waterfalls. The awesome and colorful Grand Canyon is so deep that you can barely see the river that carved it. A national monument is usually much smaller, focusing perhaps on just one archeological site or geological phenomenon, such as Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Altogether, there are more than 375 units of the national park system, including national seashores, lakeshores, battlefields and other historicsites. National parks tend to be perfect places to hike - almost all have extensive trail networks - but they're all far too large for most people to tour on foot. (Yellowstone, for example, is bigger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.) Even in those rare cases where you can use public transportation to reach a park, you'll almost certainly need some sort of vehicle to explore it once you're there. The Alaskan parks are mostly howling wilderness, with virtually no roads or facilities for tourists - you're on your own. Most parks and monuments charge admission fees ranging from $4 to $20, which cover a vehicle and all its occupants. For $50, they also sell the National Parks pass , which gives a named driver, and all passengers in the same vehicle, a year's unlimited access to (almost) every national park and monument. The more deluxe Golden Eagle pass ($65) allows access to absolutely all parks. Separate passes are available for disabled travelers and senior citi zens. While hotel-style lodges are found only in some major parks, every park or monument tends to have at least one well-organized campground for visitors. Often, a cluster of motels can be found not far outside the park boundaries. With appropriate free permits - subject to some restrictions in popular parks - backpackers can also usually camp in the backcountry (a general term for areas inaccessible by road).
For up-to-the-minute information on the national park system, access the official Park Service website at .
It features full details of the main attractions of the national parks, plus opening hours, the best times to visit, admission fees, hiking trails and visitor facilities.
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