National Parks
I'm a national parks junkie. I visit them whenever I have a chance, hike around in them, and usually take lots of pictures. Here are a few of the better ones.
Near Tucson in southern Arizona, these pictures are from the western half. This is a really nice park; there are some pretty nice hikes, and it's home to the cactus of the same name (actually a rather unusual species with a very narrow range, it's nevertheless the species most people think of when they think "cactus").
You'd think it would be easy to take pictures of the Grand Canyon. It isn't, it's just too darned big. It's really difficult to frame photographs of it nicely. Still, it's an absolutely amazing place -- you really have to see it in person to really believe it.
Death Valley is one of my favorite national parks. It's got all sorts of neat things -- the lowest point in North America, mountains over ten thousand feet, badlands, sand dunes, salt flats, and even a little semi-tropical oasis. If it's cool enough when you're there, it has some really nice trails to hike on, too.
Just north of San Francisco, Point Reyes has the rugged shoreline typical of the Pacific Coast that I'm so very fond of. It also has that northern California rain forest climate that's full of all sorts of cool things, including those famous banana slugs.
Just south of the Bay Area, inland a bit, and right on the San Andreas fault, the geology of Pinnacles is a quite anamalous for the area, and full of interesting rock outcroppings. I hear it's a great place to climb. It's definitely a nice place to hike.
