Great National Parks: Grand Canyon National Park, Great Basin National Park, Denali National Park

National parks are spectacular places that offer astounding illustrations of God’s creativity and power. These amazing areas draw many tourists each year and give them memories that stay with them for the rest of their lives. The parks show in detail how awesome and careful God was when He created the universe. Some parks are so awe inspiring that non-believers may have a difficult time denying the existence of God. Three amazing examples of God’s creation are Grand CanyonNational Park, Great BasinNational Park, and DenaliNational Park.

Grand CanyonNational Park is a place of tremendous natural beauty that attracts millions of visitors each year. Those who visit the park get to experience the breathtaking sight of the canyon’s size and greatness. Along with its massiveness, the viewer can enjoy the smaller details like the fossils engrained in the canyon’s colorful, layered walls. Running through the many passageways created by the walls is the rushing Colorado River. This cold river is calm and sparkling in some places, but raging and wild in others, having some of the most challenging rapids in North America (Vail 56). The Grand Canyon also has beautiful waterfalls that flow into this changing river. More memories will be made when the canyon’s wildlife is spotted. The Grand Canyon is home to many different animals from the monkey-faced spider, to the Grand Canyon rattlesnake, to the desert bighorn sheep (69-70).

On February 26, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill making the Grand Canyon a national park. Now the park gets nearly five million visitors each year. Some visit just to look out over the two hundred and eighty mile gorge that stretches out up to eighteen miles wide and averages four thousand to six thousand feet deep (Wuerthner 3, 42). Others enjoy riding mules or hiking through the canyon’s trails. The more daring tourists go whitewater rafting on the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon. There are also buses that give visitors rides and make stops at certain viewing points, trails, and Indian ruins (National Geographic 172).

The Grand Canyon is located in Arizona, and its climate is very much like the rest of the Southwest. Specific weather in and around the canyon has much to do with elevation. It is much colder and wetter at the higher elevations. The North Rim gets the most precipitation and has the lowest temperatures, while at the same time the canyon bottom is the hottest and most arid part of the park. Because the Grand Canyon is located about thirty degrees north of the equator, it has mostly sunny weather. During the summer, the temperatures average to over one hundred degrees in the Grand Canyon’s inner gorge, but the higher elevations average temperatures around seventy degrees. The summer also brings thunderstorms that sometimes cause flash floods (Wuerthner 10-12).

Great Basin National Park is an awesome park located in Nevada where visitors come to see magnificent scenery. The park has the region’s only glacier and towering mountains that run into low basins, or valleys, from which the park gets its name. Because of the ninety basins that make up the park, all of its rippling rivers flow inland. Great BasinNational Park also contains bristlecone pines. Bristlecone pines are some of the world’s oldest trees, and many are three thousand years old. In the base of one of the mountains is one and a half miles of underground passages called the LehmanCaves. Inside the caves, tourists can see limestone, stalactites, crystals and several other wonders (National Geographic 182).

Great BasinNational Park was established on October 27, 1986. The number of visitors each year is about eighty thousand. Visitors can enjoy hiking on the park’s sixty- five miles of trails and can stop to take a break to sightsee on the top of hills. Other travelers can mountain climb or go cross-country skiing in the winter. More exciting activities include exploring the Lehman Caves, taking a scenic drive, and visiting the historic Osceola Ditch where gold was found in 1877 (National Geographic 183-186).

Like the Grand Canyon, elevation affects much of the Great Basin’s climate. During the spring and summer, it can be hot in the basins but there can still be snow on the higher points of the park. Because the Great Basin is a desert, it doesn’t get very much rain, but it receives afternoon thunderstorms often in the summer. Great BasinNational Park also has some of the darkest night skies in the country and is one of the best parks for viewing stars at night (“Great Basin National Park-Weather”).

Denali National Park is a humongous park of over six million acres with only one eighty five mile road running through it. The park has a variety of animals that are great for viewing. Denali is home to eagles, moose, wolves, caribou, bears, Dall sheep, loons, ptarmigans, the state bird, and much more diverse wildlife. Looming over all these fascinating creatures is MountMcKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, with its snow capped peak at the same level as the clouds (National Geographic 410).

On February 26, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, established the park as MountMcKinleyNational Park, but the name was changed to DenaliNational Park on December 2, 1980. Denali is the most popular park in Alaska and averages over four hundred thousand visitors a year. Bus tours are offered to tourists. These buses drive down the lone road that runs through the park and lets viewers stop and look at wildlife that is spotted. Visitors can also hike the trails or raft down the NenanaRiver. Every year courageous mountaineers take on a dangerous challenge and try to climb to the top of MountMcKinley. The park also has kennels that house sled dogs. The sled dogs are used by park rangers to patrol the park in the winter. During the summer, visitors can see sled dog demonstrations at the kennels (National Geographic 411, 414-416).

DenaliNational Park’s climate is very diverse and often experiences sudden changes. In the summer, the average temperatures range from thirty-three to seventy-five degrees. In contrast to the mild summers, winters can be severely cold with lows of negative forty degrees and highs of only twenty degrees. During the winter it snows very much and sometimes even snows in July. The amount of daylight in Alaska is also bizarre. In summer there can be up to twenty-one hours of daylight, but in the winter there can be as little as five hours of daylight (“Denali National Park & Preserve”).

National parks display the majestic handiwork of God and attract millions of tourists every year. The tourists enjoy the wondrous scenery and wildlife along with the many unique activities they can experience at national parks. Three popular parks are Grand CanyonNational Park, Great BasinNational Park, and DenaliNational Park. These three diverse parks show the imaginative artistry of God’s creation.

If you visit a national park, make sure you have a GOOD camera!

National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. “Denali National Park & Preserve.” National Park Service-Experience Your America. 17 April 2007. http://www.nps.gov/dena/index.htm

National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. “Great BasinNationalPark- Weather.” National Park Service-Experience Your America. 15 April 2007. http://www.nps.gov/grba/planyourvisit/weather.htm

The National Geographic Society. Guide to the National Parks of the United States. 4^th ed. WashingtonD.C.: National Geographic, 2003.

Vail, Tom. Grand Canyon: A Different View. GreenForest: Master Books, 2003.

Wuerthner, George. Grand Canyon: A Visitor’s Companion. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 1998.