An alligator suns itself along the Anhinga Trail at Everglades National Park, home to more than 200,000 alligators and crocodiles. South Florida is the only known place where the two live together. Crocodilians are the largest living reptiles. Some grow to be 20 feet long!
Hoodoos are tall, totem-pole-like rock spires. Some hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah are taller than 10-story buildings. Sadly, they won't last forever. The same erosion process that created these rock towers will eventually destroy them.
A night exposure of Old Faithful Geyser erupting in Yellowstone National Park in June 2011. The geyser erupts 17 times a day. If an eruption lasts less than 2½ minutes, it will be an hour until the next one. If it lasts longer, it will be 90 minutes until the next one. Yellowstone, located mostly in Wyoming, became the world's first national park in 1872, and Old Faithful was the first geyser in the park to be named.
A visitor to Oregon's Crater Lake National Park jumps from the end of a hiking trail into the nation's deepest lake. At 1,943 feet deep, it could cover 1½ Empire State Buildings, and it holds 4.6 trillion gallons of water, enough to fill nearly 7 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
The largest national park is Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska. At 13.2 million acres, it's larger than each of eight U.S. states, including Maryland. The park also features preserve areas; sport hunting is allowed there, but not in the rest of the park.
The lowest point in North America is Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park in California. It is 282 feet below sea level. Interestingly, Mount Whitney, the highest point in the United States outside Alaska, is less than 90 miles away.
The lava flow from the Kilauea Volcano – one of the world's most active – burns vegetation as it approaches a property boundary in near the village of Pahoa, Hawaii, on Oct. 28, 2014. At the time, the lava had been heading toward the town with speeds averaging around 15 yards an hour. Kilauea and another active volcano form Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Kilauea (pronounced kill-uh-WAY-uh) has spewed enough lava since 1983 to pave a path to the moon and back five times.
Fire fighter walk near a giant Sequoia where they protect from fire outbreaks at Grant Grove in Kings Canyon National Park, Calif., Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)
A paved path snakes past a pool of water at Carlsbad Caverns National Park near Carlsbad, N.M. More than 400,000 people visit he caverns each year to get a glimpse of the monumental stalagmites and stalactites, delicate soda straws, translucent draperies and reflecting pools that decorate the park's main attraction, the Big Room. An inland sea carved out the caverns more than 250 million years ago. The biggest cavern is the length of 12½ football fields. On summer evenings, visitors enjoy watching some 400,000 bats exit the cave's mouth on their nightly search for insects to eat.
People walk by the Quapaw Baths, one of eight bathhouses on Bathhouse Row, a National Landmark historic district in Hot Springs National Park. By 1983, all but one of the bathhouses had closed, but their elaborate exteriors have been preserved. The big attraction at the Arkansas park is the water, of course. It fell to earth as rain about the time the pyramids were built, more than 4,000 years ago. Park visitors are welcome to take a taste ... and a bath.
An expansive view of the Grand Canyon's Horse Shoe Bend near Page, Arizona. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, 18 miles across (at its widest point) and 6,000 feet deep. Even so, it is not the longest, widest or deepest canyon in the world. Those are claimed by Nepal, Tibet and Australia.
Andrew Mishio, left, Dylan Harris, center, and Em Malone near the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on Nov. 22.
Andrew Coleman nears the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on Nov. 22.
Kerry Gallivan demonstrates his Chimani app while standing atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park this month. Chimani, launched in 2010, is developing a series of free mobile apps for national parks and other outdoor attractions that combine the benefits of a map, guide book and activity planner into one digital package.
Maine’s wild beauty is never more evident than from the 1,530-foot, pink granite summit of Cadillac Mountain, with its panoramic view of Frenchman Bay. Cadillac is the East Coast’s tallest mountain, and as the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, if you want to find a higher peak on the Atlantic coast, you’d have to trek all the way down to Rio de Janeiro.
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