Top Ten National Parks: No. 4
Discovering the Beauty of America's National (and other) Parks
This week’s park is one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen!
Sound familiar? Last week, we looked at our number 5 favorite National Park: The Grand Canyon. That place truly is an amazing work of art. I absolutely loved visiting it. I love studying it (especially when it comes to global flood evidence). It’s just an amazing place, and I highly recommend seeing it!
Without further ado …
Let’s get to our number 4 favorite National Park.
Our number 4 National Park is …
way out on the west coast.
It took us a long time to get there, but it was totally worth it!
In fact, this trip in the fall of 2019 was probably our most favorite trip we’ve ever taken as a family! In this trip, we scratched 5 National Parks off of our list (one in Arizona — ahem — See last week’s post!) and four in California.
(For Park Name and pictures, keeping scrolling!)
Scenery:
This place, along with another National Park that is its near neighbor, has to be the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Only two places rival its beauty (so far) — the Grand Canyon N.P., and Yosemite N.P. — in my opinion.
Not only is the scenery absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous, but the absolute coolest unique feature I have ever seen resides within the boundaries of this park (as well as it’s neighboring park that will appear on our ranking soon, and Yosemite as well, also coming soon).
What is this truly AMAZING unique feature? It is none other than the Giant Sequoia trees. These trees are … well … You just HAVE to see them!
They are absolutely amazing, and words nor pictures can do them justice! (I say that a lot on this blog, so start planning your trips now!)
That tree is like 80 of my sons tall, and like 10 of my sons wide! :)
Looking up at these Sequoia trees — GROVES of them — was truly one of the highlights of my life!
By the way, they look WAY BIGGER in person!
This National Park gets a perfect 5.0 stars for scenery!
Variety:
Don’t let this park’s variety score discourage you from visiting. While it is true that this park (and it’s neighbor park) has basically one main attraction — these gargantuan trees (and some stunning scenery around them) — still, the great thing about the area in which the park is found is that you can easily visit 2, 3, 4 or even 5 other National Parks on the same trip if you want to, so you’ll still be able to find variety that way if you are looking for it!
3.0 stars for this park for variety.
Wildlife:
Plenty of wildlife call this National Park home, including bobcats, black bears, gray foxes, mule deer, mountain lions, and bighorn sheep, among many others. This park gets a score of 4.0 stars in this category.
Camping/Lodging:
If I remember correctly, I think we stayed in the Grant Grove cabins in this National Park. We stayed one night in a primitive cabin with no heater (and FROZE that night), so we decided to upgrade to a cabin with heat the following night! Check out the link below to find out more about lodging within the park. There are plenty of options.
National Park Reservations/ Grant Grove
For Camping/Lodging opportunities, this N.P. gets a perfect 5.0 stars!
Other Amenities/Recreation Opportunities:
This area of California has not only plenty of National Park opportunities, but other recreational opportunities as well. You aren’t too far from Fresno, San Franciso, or Los Angeles (We went through Fresno, but didn’t really care to see L.A. or San Fran.) 4.5 stars.
Busyness:
I remember this park being surprisingly not very busy. Maybe it was just the time of year we visited (October), but we were pleasantly surprised. This park only had just over 560,000 visitors in 2021, so yeah, it’s not too busy! 4.0 stars.
Accessibility:
This park is not terribly far from several major metropolitan areas. How about flying into one of these cities, renting an RV and setting out on the adventure of a lifetime?!
Here’s how far this park is from several major cities:
San Francisco, CA - 5.5 hours northwest
Los Angeles, CA - 5.5 hours south
Fresno, CA - 2.45 hours west (closest)
Las Vegas, NV - 8 hours southeast
For accessibility, this park gets 4.5 stars!
Personal Experience:
As I said earlier, this park (and its neighboring park) have to be one of the most scenically stunning places on earth. It is definitely one of the most beautiful places these eyes have ever seen! That, combined with the fact that the Giant Sequoia trees are the most amazing unique feature I have ever seen, and this park comes in with a perfect personal experience score of 10.0 stars (5.0 bonus points)!
Overall Rating:
With high ratings almost across the board, and with enough bonus points coming in from this park’s personal experience score, this park comes in with a perfect rating of 5.0 stars for its overall rating!
Truly a perfect trip (well, almost), our family had an amazing time visiting …
King’s Canyon National Park — No. 4 on our top 10 ranking!
We hope that you will come back later as we reveal the first in our top 3 favorite National Parks next time! (King’s Canyon’s neighboring park just barely squeaks ahead in our ranking. You’ll have to wait till next time to see why!)
Until next time,
Keep exploring, friends!
— Chase