The Axelrod's "Top 5" National Parks in America
- Feb 17, 2023
- 8 min read
Here we go! Hold onto your hats ladies and gentleman! Less dialogue, with loads and loads of pictures and videos. We'll let the pictures tell most of the story. Our "Top 5" National Parks in America are chock-full-of luscious, delicious, scrumptious visuals.
We didn't struggle selecting our "Top Five". This wasn't nearly as challenging to select, as compared to our six through ten blog. These were our clear favorites. If you read the beginning of our last "Top Ten" blog and recall how we came up with our scoring system you can skip the next paragraph.
For consistency sake, we judged these five gems on the same number system. Each, were judged on a 1-5 basis on fun, landscape, wildlife, picturesque, hiking and bike trails, and driving availability. Then, we used an additional tie-breaker on that same 1-5 basis, separately, we gave each NP an overall rating, on an individual basis. Here's our "Top 5". We hope you dig it.
#5 Glacier National Park-Montana . We started off on a car tour heading out on the park's main street called Going to the Sun Road. It's a 34 mile car ride from beginning to end. Our first pitstop, was the scenic and massive Lake McDonald. The first set of pics below.
We stopped at McDonald Lodge were they provided boat tours of the lake. We didn't partake, but, it was a different look at the landscape along with a homey lodge. So, it was a cool stop, McDonald Falls fed into Lake McDonald and the Upper McDonald Creek Trail which was a short hike with luscious views. (All pics these are above).
On our way back from Going to the Sun Road we stopped to check out the sunset with an accompanying video below. It's was simply stunning!
Road to the Sun Road at some point closes off to cars so the next two days we took our bikes where our car couldn't go. Both rides were awesome adventures. One day it rained a bit which added an interesting dynamic to the ride and on the other Kathy's bike ran out of battery so we did alot of coasting downhill the 8500 foot elevation. We eventually switched bikes. Brad taking the one with no battery power. Who said chivalry is dead? The video below is the start of one of the bike rides and the pics below are all from those two days. The second video was almost at the peak where Kathy ran out of power. Glacier was a "five" for FUN!
#4 Redwood National Park - California This National Park was #4 because it's beaches were mouth-watering, it had huge-huge trees, magnificent overlooks, magical forests, sweeping woods, plus, wonderland and easy trails. Below are pics from our first day there. Great start!
Days two and three at Redwood NP were just as magnificent! The pics below were from Dry Lagoon Beach, Trillium Falls (which was enchanting), Lost Man Creek Picnic Area (pics above), Trinidad Creek, Crescent Beach, Anchor Way, Battery Point Lighthouse Castle, and then we went back for the Sunset. Phewwwwww!
Day four was Redwood City! Including the 1500 year old Big Tree, 283 feet high, with, a circumference of almost 75ft. It lived up to it's name..It's Enormous! .
Redwood could have easily snuck in as our number 3 but the uniqueness of Big Bend, nosed it out. By a hair...
#3 Big Bend National Park-Texas This one will probably be your biggest surprise. It easily made our "Top Five" making all the way up to our number three. Here's why...It's on the US-Mexico border which was intriguing, The Rio Grande runs through it which was powerful, and between the cactus, the mountains, canyons, and hot springs it was like being in the Wild-Wild West.
Our campground was closer to Big Bend State Park than the National Park so we hit that on our first half day there.
We took this National Park in on three distinct and amazingly different areas. The star of our first day was the Sante Elena Canyon and Overlook.
We also took in Mule Ears Viewpoint on the way to the Sole Vista Overlook which was close to 7000 feet high. It was really-really cold up there but made for some marvelous pictures!
Chisos Basin was the next days destination. Pitstops along the way included the Panther Junction Visitor Center and the Window Trail both, along the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive.
The last day it took us an hour drive to get to the US-Mexico border. Boy, was it worth it! We hit the, the Boquillas Crossing Port of Entry. It was very-very cool! We had to show our passports and go through customs. We passed on the $5 rowboat ride across the Rio Grande into Mexico and the $5 donkey ride into the town of Boquillas del Carmen. If you check out the video below you'll get a real feel for the crossing. The stills below, will give you a different taste of the same.
The Boquillia Canyon Trail to the Canyon might have been the highlight of the visit. The trail was awesome and the payoff was HUGE. There was a Mexican dude selling tamales and artwork along the trail. We'll get back to him later...please check out the pics and you'll see what we're talking about.
The video wil give you a good feel of what Boquillia Canyon was at the end of the trail...excuse the cliche but it was like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
When we stopped at the Rio Grande Overlook the same dude that was selling the art and tamales on the Boquilla Canyon Trail was crossing the Rio Grande on his horse and heading home to Mexico after a days worth of hard work.
Then the Hot Springs...the only thing missing were our bathing suits.
No surprise, Big Bend NP...numero tres!
#2 Yosemite National Park - California Yo, Yo, Yo Yosemite. Wow, this park had it all....waterfalls, rivers, creeks, mountains, giant Sequoias' and bike and driving trails to die for, Both were extremely accessible. When you check out these pics and videos you'll understand why Yosemite was number two.
We entered the Park at the Fish Camp Entrance and stopped at the Mariposa Visitor Center then we hit the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. Sounds boring but it surely wasn't. Then a CT. dude who's wife was a ranger at the park stopped us because he recognized our CT. license plate and recommended going to the Hanging Bridge. We went...Pics are at the bottom of the next set of stills. It was awesome!
After, we took Wawona Rd. to the magnificent Tunnel View which was the perfect lookout to Valley View. It seemed as if were just entering the park. That lead us to Sentinel Beach which you'll see by the pics below was absolutely, breath-taking.
We picked up the next day where we left off on visit number one. First stop was Lower Falls
Which led to a bike ride through the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center, theater, lodge, village and the amazing 4100 ft. elevation Mirror Lake. Were we picnicked.
On our way back to the RV we stopped to see what all these people were gawking at...a mountain climber. Crazy!!
The next day we took an 8 mile roundtrip hike to Mariposa Grove to see the gigantic sequoias. Wow, wow, wow! Probably our longest and most fulfilling hike of all of our travels. The Grizzly Giant was the BIG payoff which is as tall as the Statue of Liberty. Yep! God bless America!
Drum roll please...(oh forget it, you saw our #1 in the opening paragraph) Here's our favorite National Park in America...
#1 Yellowstone National Park - Montana & Wyoming Why is Yellowstone our favorite National Park and our #1? This park has it all...that's why!. It's huge point of difference is it's incomparable array of active geysers, hot-hot springs, paint pots and mud volcanos (uh-huh!),
What really set this park apart from all the others is the amazing wildlife. That made it super exciting and fun. We saw bison (herds of them) big bad bears, and elk, plus, a handful of waterfalls, magnificent lakes, fast-flowing creeks and mountain peaks. It is simply an AMAZING PLACE!
We entered at the West Yellowstone entrance to the park and after a quick but scenic drive past the Madison River and Firehole Canyon Drive and Falls it seemed we entered into what we're going to call geyser city!
Yellowstone had so much life to it, we thought it you would get a better feel through moving, living, live videos. So here comes a slew of them. High-energy, scenic, wildlife and landscapes that we can't wait to share with you.
There were hundreds of people waiting for the "scheduled" eruption of old Faithful. Why? Cause it's Old Faithful! This 75 foot blast of earth water lasts about a minute and 30 seconds. Check it out!
On our way back from Old Faithful we stopped for a lovely sunset overlooking Fairy Creek and Midway Geyser Basin just before running into this brown bear. We were all heading home. Yikes!
Our second day at Yellowstone was a twelve hour fun-filled-action-packed exploration of the northern portion of the park. We covered so much space we stopped at four different visitor centers to get our National Park Passport book stamped at everyone. There were many highlights of the day. Gibbons Falls was only our first stop. It was both pretty and powerful.
The living, breathing Beryl Spring was next which featured a steamroom and hot tub.
Beryl Spring had some connecting trails to some weird and wonderful paint pots and geysers.
This is a video of our first run-in with a herd of Buffalo. Some people insist you call them Bison...their both.
Here are a handful of pics from our stops at North Geyser Basin, Obsidian Cliffs, Sheepeater Cliffs, Angels Terrace and Mammoth Hot Springs,
Tower Falls...
We ran into this guy while we were adventuring.
Kathy was getting pooped out and needed a rest, so she decided to take a car-nap while Brad took a short 1/2 mile backcountry hike to Wrath Falls. He was looking over his shoulder all the way. In an attempt to avoid bears. Not that he saw any here but there were lots of warning signs about them. Below, are some pics of the hike and a video of the cute little Falls (In comparison to the others).
On our way home we ran into this Bison limping down the road. Kathy was extremely concerned for his safety. See why....
3rd day - We drove through the Continental Divide which is a naturally occurring boundary separating our continents river system. Each river system feeds into a distinct river basin. So these next few videos you'll visit Yellowstone Lake and some ferocious waterfalls along with pics of Yellowstone River.
Kepler Cascade
Mud Volcano...plop, plop, fizz, fizz
Dragon Mouth Spring...Check it out and you'll see why it's called what it's called.
If your short on time we recommend you skip the first Bison video below. There's a cool closeup of one. Better yet check'em both out. Their both entertaining. The second video features a herd of them and it might be the most spectaular of all our videos...only if you like Bison of course.
Don't miss this video!
The Brink of Upper Falls..very fast moving water close-up with a wonderful view.
The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and the Lookout of Upper Falls
On the way back to our hotel after a wonderful three days in Yellowstone. a huge elk was walking right next to our car but what was even wilder was the Bison that ran in front of our car. Brad had to swerve into the other lane to avoid hitting this huge-huge animal. Thank god no cars were coming in the other direction/lane. If we would have hit that buffalo he would have won. That concluded our action-packed visit to our favorite park in the U.S.A. This whirlwind of a visit is a wrap.
Thank you for reading down this far and thanks for following our journey. We really enjoy sharing our adventures with you. If you enjoyed this blog please like it and if your not already subscribed, please do.
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Peace and Love, Kathy and Brad
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Ok maybe not a big surprise but really interesting how Big Bend made it in. Altho I recall how much you liked it on your way out west. What a great tribute to our National Park system! ❤️
Love reading your posts; appreciate all the work that goes into sharing your amazing adventures!! Safe Travels 😃