My Little Tour of America - National Parks

In-between the city stops on the USA tour we also visited three National Parks. Deciding which ones to see was tough considering how many national parks California has to offer.

The first park we visited was Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is stunning. What seems like infinite forests of Pine trees stretching as far as the eye can see…

It also plays host to amazing waterfalls and towering mountains. It’s truly extraordinary.

It’s also where I saw my first wild Black Bear. Despite the name; around 95% of the Black Bears found in the Sierra Nevada are actually brown, as was the beautiful creature I found myself catching a glimpse of foraging for bugs in a fallen tree…

The second park was on our way to LA – Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Although mostly forest and mountains it is very different to Yosemite.

Sequoia is named after its stunning Redwood population – Sequoiadendron Giganteum or Giant Sequoia.

Wow do they live up to their name, they literally tower above you making you feel tiny in comparison. The national park is home to the largest tree in the world by volume, General Sherman.

The final park we visited was an easy decision. Grand Canyon National Park - simply breath-taking.

The Grand Canyon isn’t in the middle of the desert as I’d imagined. When I had previously thought of Arizona I thought ‘flat’, ‘vast’, ‘dry’, when actually the national park is surrounded by beautiful forest.

The canyon itself is incredible. Beautiful canyons carved by the Colorado River over nearly two billion years make you feel like you’re standing upon an alien landscape.

And it’s so quiet – even though there were groups of people less than 200ft behind us we couldn't hear a single thing.

We had planned to stargaze in a few places during the trip but knew that, if the sky was clear, the perfect place to see the stars would be The Grand Canyon. We were so right!