Visiting the National Parks is at or near the top of the reasons why many of us chose the RV Lifestyle. What better way to tour these national treasures, to experience with all our senses the wondrous glacier-covered mountains, rugged wave-sculpted coastlines, centuries-old Native American dwellings, and free-roaming wildlife--a virtual retrospective of the New World that the first explorers found when they stepped off the boat.
Following is the first of my Top Ten National Park picks. The rest will follow in the weeks ahead. A difficult choice, with so many great parks to choose from, to qualify they had to be RV friendly, offering camping, road-touring, or optional means of seeing the park, encompass some of the most breathtaking and wild scenery in the country, have abundant wildlife, and offer a variety of recreational opportunities to make it a destination choice.
They represent several varieties of terrain spread over nine states and Canada, from Maine to California. Not in any special order, my first profile is Mesa Verde National Park.
Mesa Verde in the Southwestern corner of Colorado celebrated its 100th anniversary as a national park in 2006, the first park in the National Parks system dedicated to preserving the efforts and lifestyle of a human culture, and is the only park in this list whose main attraction is man-made. The park has also been designated a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO.More than 4,000 archeological sites have been discovered in the park, representing the Ancestral Pueblo (formerly called Anasazi) culture from AD 600 to 1300. Six hundred cliff dwellings
hug the cliffs, the best preserved in the nation. For wildlife watcher, in addition to abundant deer and wild turkeys, watch for black bear, elk, coyote, gray fox, and marmot. Free-roaming horses from the Ute Reservation graze along park roads.The park's Morefield Campground has 435 campsites, 15 with hookups, takes no reservations, and has never filled in its history. Amenities include showers, dump station, laundry, gas station and general store.
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Thanks for your list. When is your favorite time of year to visit these parks? Have you been to Mesa Verde in the fall and would there be fewer visitors at that time?
ReplyDeleteLynn
www.allaboutoregon.blogspot.com
We've been here visiting two years ago in mid September. The weather was great. We didn't camp there as we didn't check ahead on the amenities or size of the sites. Looking forward to your next NP's of your list,
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I were there the fall of 07-early Nov. We didn't camp at Mesa Verde, but at Cortez. I didn't have satellite TV yet and my wife had to have TV. We drove through the campground and it was very empty. We spent three months in our motorhome touring the Colorado Plateau area-eight National Parks, five National Monuments and one National Recreation Area. I did a total of 138 miles of back country hiking. Gary
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