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Outside Magazine May 2002

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Destinatons: National Parks
The Best of the Rest
How To Get Off the Beaten Trail (or River, or Mountain) With These 43 Soon-To-Be-Classic National Park Adventure
By Jennifer Villeneuve


	The Narrows in Zion National Park (PhotoDisc)

ARCHES NATIONAL PARK
Moab, Utah / 76,519 acres
Your best (and perhaps only) bet for solitude in this popular park: Get up at dawn and HIKE the six-mile Devil's Garden loop trail over slickrock and sagebrush scrub—and past five of the park's namesake sandstone arches—to see 306-foot-tall Landscape Arch illuminated at sunrise.
435-719-299, www.nps.gov/arch

BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK
Interior, South Dakota / 242,756 acres
Make the Sage Creek Campground in the west end of the park your base for DAY HIKES in the trailless, 64,000-acre Sage Creek Wilderness Area—the park system's largest mixed-grassland prairie, filled with pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, and bison.
605-433-5361, www.nps.gov/badl

Your Official National Parks Pass

From Acadia to Zion, 70 surefire ways to climb, kayak, trek, dive, sail, fly-cast, and generally bliss out in the backcountry heaven of America's great parks.

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK
Big Bend, Texas / 801,163 acres
The ten miles of prickly-pear-and-cholla-cactus-lined trails atop Mesa de Anguila, in the park's rugged western reaches, are a BACKPACKER'S DREAM—challenging and remote. Unless you're a rattlesnake, avoid the scorching summer sun.
915-477-2251, www.nps.gov/bibe

BISCAYNE NATIONAL PARK
Homestead, Florida / 172,924 acres
DIVE or SNORKEL the 85-degree waters off quiet Shark Reef in the southeastern corner of this marine playground (the park is 95 percent water), and you'll spot corals, Kool-Aid-colored parrot fish, and the occasional harmless nurse shark.
305-230-1144, www.nps.gov/bisc

BLACK CANYON OF THE GUNNISON NATIONAL PARK
Montrose, Colorado / 29,927 acres
CROSS COUNTRY-SKI the six-mile South Rim Road from Gunnison Point to High Point Overlook (it's closed to traffic December-March) for dizzying views of the 2,000-foot-deep, marblelike gneiss canyon—but none of the RVers that swarm the park each summer.
970-641-2337, www.nps.gov/blca

BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK
Bryce Canyon, Utah / 35,835 acres
Gawk at the multicolored sandstone spires and pinnacles towering up to 150 feet from the seldom-traveled Riggs Spring Loop, a nine-mile HIKING trail from Yovimpa Point, over sun-bleached plateaus, and through a Ponderosa pine forest, to Rainbow Point.
435-834-5322, www.nps.gov/brca

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