Five Lesser Known National Parks

Hidden Gems Across the United States

By: Sadie Neal

Birds are chirping in the trees, leaves crunching from an unknown animal as you take a deep breath, filling your lungs with fresh, unpolluted air. You’re standing at the crest of a steep hill, but the long climb to the top is worth it when you glimpse the sprawling acres of earth laid before you. That hill you just climbed is only one of the hundreds that can cover this national park’s land.

National parks and monuments are designated areas of territory or land where visitors can come from miles around to experience their beauties. The problem is, the majority of these visitors travel to more well-known parks, leaving the other 50+ parks in the dust. Due to their popularity, these famous parks are far more crowded.

Five deserve just as much attention as these more popular parks. It is perfectly fine to visit any of the other famous parks but if you don’t have an allure for large crowds of tourists, you should try these next couple of National Parks. There’s Acadia National Park in Maine, home to incredible coastlines. Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park is where you can find numerous dormant and active volcanoes all over the island. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park have hundreds of tall, beautiful sequoia trees. Glacier National Park is in Montana with around 2 dozen active glaciers on the property, so they’re still in the process of moving around. Lastly, Katmai National Park has not only flora but also fauna; a large population of bears that live throughout the park.

Ted Stout worked at numerous national parks for over

32 years. He believes that the best part about these national parks is the experiences themselves. When visitors come from all around, he said “they can learn about these special places and also have a great time visiting some really spectacular scenery.” Once you start traveling to all these individual parks, you can’t stop, they’re all so beautiful that there might not be one that triumphs all others.

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Ralph Lake has been a visitor at all sorts of national parks throughout his lifetime. He’s visited Acadia National Park several times in the past; so due to his past experiences with the National Parks, Lake has incredible insights into the differences between parks. The majority of his visits have been in summer and fall because Acadia National Park isn’t normally visited in the winter due to the snowfall.

He said, “The season I liked the best is in October because the color change is spectacular.” In fall, the leaves on all the trees begin their change from green to orange. It is a magnificent piece of nature that is outstanding to witness if you’re lucky enough to visit the right place at the right time.

The coastlines of Acadia National Park are not beautiful, sandy beaches. Instead, they have rocky, uneven shores which can draw in some people even more. Lake is one of them, claiming that even though there are “few beaches because of the rocky coast,” he’s still drawn to it because he “liked the rocky coastlines of Maine and the Northwest.”

Hawai’i Volcanoes

National Park is another exceptional option to visit. This park is home to numerous volcanoes, as said in the name but also beautifully diverse wildlife. Although the place itself is well-known, due to its remoteness the park isn’t widely visited. This distance is one of the main negatives of the park itself because just visiting Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park can be expensive when working in the price of taking flights to and from. Distance aside, this park has an incredibly distinct range of plants and animals alike.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park is in California. The park is home to massive sequoia trees that stretch towards the sky. These trees can live for over 1,000 years and the trunks can be over 20 feet in diameter. But this park is better known than the others so the crowds could be larger.

Katmai National Park is up in Alaska. But location aside, this park is rich in wildlife and scenery due to the famous bear population and sprawling forests. Speaking of bears, they are a popular part of Katmai National Park because of their vast population and dependency on Sockeye Salmon. Rebecca Nourot is a District Interpreter at this park. District Interpreters are throughout every single national park and they help out any visitors who need it. If you want to know the best place to watch the sunset or the fastest hiking trail to use, you go to Rebecca Nourot.

When asked about what visitors enjoy doing, she said, “Bear watching and fishing are the most popular activities for visitors.” because of their famous fat bear week. Their fat bear week is a competition between all the bears on the property; creating a bracket with all the fat bears that eat a ton right before hibernation begins, people can vote on who they think is the fattest bear until one remains. They also have almost 4 million acres of land that’s open for anyone to hike or camp in, but if you’re experienced and brave enough.

Glacier National Park is closer to Austin than Alaska because it’s in Montana instead. As the name suggests, it has several glaciers all across its acres of land. These glaciers are still active so they are steadily moving around. This park is also home to a wide range of animals such as bears, wolves, deer, and many species of birds. Glacier National Park also contains large meadows and valleys filled with flowers and plants that have grown after a glacier moved through. With over 50 national parks across the country, the task of deciding exactly which one to visit can be daunting. But whether you visit Katmai or Craters of the Moon

National Park, try to follow Stout’s advice to “have a great time visiting some really spectacular scenery and learning about history as well.”