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As we travel around the United States, we have visited a lot of National Parks and Monuments. Here I highlight the western parks and monuments with a link to more pictures and narrative in my Blog. The above picture is from Zion National Park, although it's hard to tell because I am having a hard time getting it to fit in the space.

Arizona
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument ~~ Home of the Hohokam people from the 14th Century

Grand Canyon National Park - South Rim ~~ The most visited, the South Rim offers a hotel, rim overlooks, and a trailhead leading to the inner canyon.

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim ~~ The North Rim rises 1,000 feet higher and offers overlooks and scenic drives.

Montezuma Castle National Monument ~~ Constructed around 700 A.D. by the Sinagua people, ancestors of the Hopi


Petrified Forest National Park ~~ Formed nearly 225 million years ago, there is petrified wood, part Route 66, as well as fossilized plants and animals

Pipe Spring National Monument ~~ Named by Mormon pioneers, ancestral Puebloan people and Kaibab Paiute Indians lived here for thousands of years
 
Saguaro National Park ~~ Saguaros can live up to 200 years and grow as tall as 50 feet.

Tuzigoot National Monument ~~ A 110-room pueblo built by the Sinagua people on a ridgeline 120 feet above the Verde River flood plain


California
Cabrillo National Monument ~~ In 1542 explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo stepped ashore, making him the first European to land on the west coast

Joshua Tree National Park ~~ Distinctive yucca trees that can grow up to 50 feet tall.


Colorado
Great Sand Dunes National Park ~~ With 30 miles of dunes, some reaching 750 feet high, people hike and sled up and down the dunes

Mesa Verde National Park  (Chapin Mesa) (Far View Community) (Wetherill Mesa) ~~ Famous cliff dwellings built by the Puebloan people about 550 A.D., who lived there for about 700 years

Rocky Mountain National Park ~~ We had two visits to Colorado, including the National Park - one in July 1992, and the second in July 2004.  Wooded forests, mountain tundra, glaciers, and 14ers.


Montana
Glacier National Park ~~ Famous for Going-to-the-Sun Road which takes you from one end to the other through forest, glaciers and waterfalls

New Mexico
Carlsbad Caverns National Park ~~ One of the world's most famous caves; houses a natural limestone chamber 225 feet high, 625 feet wide, and 4,000 feet long

El Malpais National Monument ~~ Formed by volcanic activity, it is full of lava flows, cinder cones, and other black basalt features

El Morro National Monument ~~ A small pool sits at the base of a tall sandstone bluff, Anasazi left petroglyphs, and a Puebloan village

Petroglyph National Monument ~~ More than 20,000 petroglyphs date from between 1300 A.D. to 1600 A.D.
​
White Sands National Monument ~~ Features 275 square miles of sand dunes comprised of gypsum crystals

South Dakota
Badlands National Park ~~ Prairie, buttes and fossils highlight the badlands. 

M
inuteman Missile Nat'l Historic Site ~~ Was once the site of more than 1,000 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites 

Mount Rushmore National Memorial ~~ Massive sculpture of four U.S. Presidents 

Texas
Big Bend National Park (Chisos Mountains & Boquillas Canyon) (Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive) ~~ Part of the Chihuahuan Desert (larger than the state of Rhode Island) is here and the wooded Chisos Mountains, as well as the Rio Grande River

Waco Mammoth National Monument ~~ This is a paleontological site and museum in Waco where fossils of 24 Columbian mammoths were found

Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument ~~ Inhabited by Paleo-Indians at the end of the last ice age, some 13,000 years ago

Utah
Arches National Park ~~ There are more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, but we just saw a very small part of them. There are many other rock formations in this 76,000 acre park
​
Bryce Canyon National Park ~~ Mysterious, maze-like hoodoos and stones of red, orange and white rocks

Canyonlands National Park ~~ High-desert canyons, mesas, arches and buttes created by the Colorado and Green Rivers

Golden Spike Nat'l Historic Site ~~ Located at Promontory Summit near Great Salt Lake, it is the spot where railroads from the east and west were ceremonially joined on May 10, 1869

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument ~~ We visited the Paria Mountains in southern Utah; colored mountains in a vast landscape
​
Natural Bridges National Monument ~~ Home to one of the largest natural bridges in the world, known as Sipapu 

Zion National Park ~~ Multicolored formations of 240-million year old rock


Washington
Mt. Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument ~~ The volcano that exploded in 1980 blowing its top and spewing ash for hundreds of miles

​North Cascades National Park ~~ Located on the northern border of Washington, it includes mountains, glaciers, ice fields, alpine lakes and waterfalls

Olympic National Park (Hurricane Ridge) ~~ Part of the park is along the western short, which we did not get to, but did drive to Hurricane Ridge, a high point of the park.


Wyoming
Devils Tower National Monument ~~ Famously the site of the alien spaceship landing in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" it is an 867-foot monolith

Grand Teton National Park ~~ Neighboring Jackson Hole and Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Range, hosting 13,775 foot Grand Teton

Yellowstone National Park (Old Faithful) (North Rim Trail) ~~ America's first national park, it hosts Old Faithful and many other geysers and geothermal activity