Great American Road Trips: National Parks. Edited by Editors of Country, Reader’s Digest, 2021.

This is a companion to Great American Road Trips: Scenic Drives and, if anything, is even better. The book uses the same format as the first one with color pictures on virtually every page and first person accounts by a variety of people. In some cases the photographers are the writers but not always.

Some of the photographs in Great American Road Trips: National Parks are stunning. A reason for that is simply that many of national parks themselves are visually stunning—think of the Grand Canyon, for example. But many of the photos are not merely photos of popular sites; they are done with exceptional skill and, sometimes, serendipity. There is one photograph of the Grand Canyon, for example, taken near sunset with a distant thunderstorm and lightning bolt. It looks like a painting by John Martin or someone from the Hudson Valley School.

The descriptions are also helpful. Although we may not think about it, I was not surprised to read that Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande in Texas has recorded more bird species than any other national park. After all, Roger Tory Peterson wrote a field guide each for Eastern and Western North American birds and then decided he had to make a third one just for the birds of Texas.

Some of the descriptions are anecdotal. Some are written by people who visit the same park every year. Others share their discoveries with the reader as something new-found. The account of a retired woman’s hike into the Grand Canyon borders on a survival story. It makes for exciting reading not unlike the Reader’s Digest‘s True Life Adventure tales.

This reviewer lives in the Northeast, and there is really only one National Park as such in the region, Acadia in Maine. There are some seashores and monuments and historical parks, but only Acadia north of Virginia and east of Michigan. However, I have visited some of the other parks when we have been able to, but none of the famous ones in the West. The only time in my life when I was in Wyoming, Yellowstone was closed for the winter. Still, the descriptions of Shenandoah, Olympic, Volcano, and Acadia were accurate and helpful. I felt the Everglades got a cursory treatment, but not everyone travels for the birds. In spite of that, the Everglades photos were lovely.

Great American Road Trips—National Parks includes even the parks that are out of the way for many like Denali, Big Bend, Volcano, and Virgin Islands National Parks. Even if we cannot visit each one, we can surely appreciate them by the accounts and photographs in this beautiful book.