Washington, July 21: The biggest, the deepest, the widest – you name it, as far as natural wonders go the United States of America packs them in.
An amazing system of national parks, national monuments and historical parks preserves an unrivalled beauty and diversity of environments and stunning landscapes, and nowhere is the concentration of parks greater than in the wild Southwest.
For the itchy-footed traveller who yearns for freedom and space, those convenient green sectors marked on touring maps highlight the very best of what this region has to offer.
California is a logical starting point and if each state had just one absolute "must visit" park, then Yosemite National Park, 155km from San Francisco and perched high in the ragged peaks of the Sierra Nevada Ranges. The Yosemite Valley, scoured through granite peaks over tens of thousands of years by the Merced River and later by glaciers, is one of the most visited places in the United States and not without good reason.
Thundering waterfalls plunge from sheer cliff faces that tower thousands of metres above the valley floor where meadows are swept with wild flowers and deep green woodlands. It is so beautiful that you can even forget the crowds, but for wilderness all to yourself all you have to do is hit the walking trails throughout the park (and there are more than 1200km of them). Sliding down off the Sierra Nevada via the 2983m Tioga Pass into increasingly dry landscapes, Highway 395 leads to the Death Valley National Park and here you could not get a greater contrast to Yosemite's lushness.
In this region our road map read like a list from hell: Furnace Creek, Badwater, Desolation Canyon, Starvation Point and Hell's Gate. Dazzling white salt pans, rock-strewn plains and windblown sand dunes slide past in a kaleidoscope of images. The park headquarters at Furnace Creek, an oasis of date palms, makes a great base to explore the various points of interest across the valley. It's worth venturing out on to the salt pans at 86m below sea level if only to say that you've been to the lowest point on the North American continent.
With a feel-good beat on the radio and the hot, flat desert country of northeast Arizona slipping by, Canyon de Chelly National Monument came as a distinct surprise, opening to reveal two deep sandstone canyons of immense beauty. The famous White House Anasazi ruins built into the canyon wall can be reached by a short walk, but it is well worth spending a few days to explore further afield. Local Indians run guided overnight walks and have a wealth of indigenous lore to share with visitors.
It is often said that words cannot describe the amazement felt when a person approaches the gaping chasm of the Grand Canyon and gazes into its incredible depth for the first time. Rent a mule if you aren't particularly worried about your posterior, take a helicopter flight for a celestial angle or hit the trails on foot, but you simply must experience the Grand Canyon from more than just the rim.
Somewhere along the flattest run of Highway 396 in Arizona we came across a truly startling park, Petrified Forest National Park. The last thing you imagine driving along these eternal flat plains is a forest. But 225 million years ago hundreds of logs washed down rivers here and were later petrified by silt and volcano ash, leaving what is today the largest accumulation of petrified logs in the world.
If there is a place in the USA where one feels the past crowding in then Chaco Culture National Historical Park in north-western New Mexico is it. Here in the 900s AD, in this high desert landscape of lonely buttes and windswept plains, the Anasazi people built a powerful central command.
Anasazi masonry construction was at its peak during this period and the ruins are still in remarkable shape.
Walking through the chambers, living quarters are easily discernible. Shards of pottery litter the dusty floor and an abandoned grinding stone marks the site of a kitchen.
Utah is an outdoor person's utopia. Whether it be canyoning, mountain biking, rock climbing, trekking, rafting, potholing or camping, Utah has it all. Carved out by the Colorado River is Canyonlands National Park. This is a land of canyons, arches, buttes and spires and one could spend a month going from one amazingly beautiful site to the next.
Rafting, hiking, four-wheel driving, educational programs, mountain biking and horseback tours are available through the park with operators based in nearby Moab. In Arches National Park you find the world's greatest concentration of gravity-defying rock arches.
With a network of good sealed roads and well-marked walking tracks, you could easily spend a while here.
Being spoilt for choice is what driving throughout the southwestern states is all about. "This is the most beautiful place on Earth," wrote author Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire about Arches, but every park in this corner of the USA could lay claim to the title.
Travel Guide
Bureau Report
