20 Amazing Views You'll See in U.S. National Parks

The largest park in the country, Wrangell-St. Elias lies in a corner of southern Alaska, adjacent to the Yukon's Kluane National Park just over the border. Its 52,000 square kilometers make for a whole lot of potential exploration. Go on a hike along the Skookum Volcano Trail.

Just south of Moab and the more recognized Arches National Park, Canyonlands also features some impressive sandstone arch formations, as well as canyons of monumental scale, carved by the Colorado and Green rivers.

Encompassing a long strip of both the Blue Ridge Mountains and adjacent Shenandoah River Valley, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia gets super popular during the fall, when leaf peepers arrive to complete the 169-kilometer Skyline Drive.

The world's first national park is also one of its most unique and well visited. The 8,806 square kilometers of Yellowstone hold geysers, mountain lakes, forests, river canyons, waterfalls, and many threatened species. The park's Grand Prismatic Spring is the third-largest hot spring in the world.

Congaree protects a vast tract of marshy hardwood forest along the river of the same name just southeast of Columbia, South Carolina. Its old-growth cypress trees are some of the tallest in the eastern USA.

Low and hot – Death Valley is home to both the lowest elevations and hottest temperatures in the USA, but the landscape in this part of California is actually incredibly diverse, ranging from saltpans like the Devil's Racetrack to snow-capped mountains reaching 3,353 meters.

Bryce sits in southern Utah and features a massive collection of natural amphitheaters covered in rock formations known as hoodoos.

Great Smoky is surrounded by kitschy tourist towns and is the most visited national park, thanks to its location near the East Coast and free admission. Still, once you're there, you can see scenes like this.

Named for the largest of its three signature peaks, Grand Teton National Park also contains lakes, forest, and a section of the Snake River. It sits just south of Yellowstone in western Wyoming, and together they represent one of the largest protected ecosystems in the world.

Covering nearly 405,000 hectares on the peninsula of the same name in northwestern Washington, the terrain of Olympic National Park is super variable, ranging from Pacific coastline to alpine peaks to temperate rainforest.

One of the country's newest national parks (designated in 2004), Great Sand Dunes lies in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Featuring the tallest sand dunes on the continent, backed by multiple 3,9620-meter mountains, this is also one of the few places in the country where you can try sandboarding.

The central draw of Yosemite is the 18-square-kilometer valley of the same name, with its glacially carved peaks, sequoia groves, and spectacular waterfalls. To beat the crowds, get out and explore some of the other areas in this massive park in the Eastern Sierras.

This aptly named park in eastern Utah, just north of Moab, is home to some 2,000 sandstone arches that come in all shapes and sizes. One of the most photographed in Arches is the Delicate Arch.

There are no roads leading to Glacier Bay in southeastern Alaska, so your choices for getting there are: by raft via the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers (from Canada), by plane (usually out of Juneau), or, most commonly, by cruise ship.

Like Sequoia National Park next door, Kings Canyon is home to some seriously massive trees. Seen above is a stout ponderosa pine on the Bubbs Creek Trail.

Expansive desert plains, 2,377-meter mountains, and high Rio Grande canyons, including the Santa Elena Canyon, define Big Bend National Park in western Texas. It's also distinguished as an International Dark Sky Park, marking it a great place for stargazing.

As far as views from the visitor center go, this one is pretty spectacular. The 2.54 million hectares of Denali, in central Alaska, include the highest section of the Alaska Range (with the peak that gives the park its name), glaciers, river valleys, and abundant wildlife such as grizzly bears, caribou, gray wolves, golden eagles, wolverines, and Dall sheep.

Preserving one of the most significant wetland ecosystems anywhere in the world, southern Florida's Everglades protect rare species such as the Florida panther and American crocodile. The water in Everglades National Park is actually an enormous river that runs from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay.

As its name suggests, this is the northernmost park in the USA, and is also one of the largest. Its predominant geographic feature is the Brooks Range. With zero road access, you have to hike or fly in, but once there, you've got pretty much an endless list of wilderness hiking and camping options.

For the past several million years, the Colorado River has been slowly but steadily grinding its way through the rock of the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona. Reaching a width of 29 kilometers and a depth of 1,829 meters, the Grand Canyon is on a scale of few other places on Earth.