If you want to experience a couple different ecosystems all on the same trip, head to Washington State! At Olympic National Park, you'll find glacier mountains, rainforests and more — it is the Pacific Northwest, after all. Spend your days hiking and climbing, if you so dare.
Skip Coachella and hang out in Joshua Tree. Just outside Palm Springs, it's a hot bed (literally) for the spa crowd — amid the namesake Joshua trees, aka Yucca brevifolia (a type of agave), you could just as easily find yourself in a sound bath as on a hike through the Sonora and Mojave deserts. Save some time for stargazing!
Grand Teton is a skiiers' paradise, given its inclusion of Jackson Hole Valley among the Teton Mountain Range. Wyoming is a natural wonderland, it turns out, with snow-capped mountains that look straight out of a postcard. This park is also adjacent to Yellowstone, so you can kill two birds with one (yellow)stone.
Ocean and mountains convene in Maine at Acadia, which is flush with hiking trails for all skill levels that really pay off when you get to the top — including Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the East Coast. It's also a great spot for wild bald eagle viewing, in my personal experience.
From sharp, granite cliffs to tumbling waterfalls, Yosemite Valley's mile-wide, 7 mile-long canyon is more inviting than it sounds! With the Sierra Nevada Mountains as your backdrop, this California park is also abundant with those massive sequoia trees you can drive your car through. Naturally, we all want to see one of those.
The Colorado Rockies are a large, breathtaking range, but it's not all about the rugged mountains, here — it's a lush park, dotted with lakes and streams so you're really at one with nature.
The world's first (that's right!) national park has its own damn TV show, so we know it's good. I'm constantly hearing incredible things about the state of Montana, and that's just one area of this vast park — you can hang out in Wyoming and Idaho, as well. Take in geysers and mountain lakes, plus forests filled with wildlife like bison, bears and moose.
I like to think of Zion as the Grand Canyon's more approachable little brother. You're still getting gorgeous red rock canyons cut through by the Virgin River in Utah, but there's much more room to spread out and walk through sections of sandstone rising from the ground.
It must come as no surprise that the Grand Canyon brings in tons of visitors to Arizona each year. And there's so much more to it than, you know, a gaping, unfathomable hole in the earth. You can hike down the interior of the canyon, for example, or head out on a rafting trip along the Colorado River. I'll leave the mule and helicopter rides to the adrenaline junkies, though.
You might not think of North Carolina and Tennessee as the most nature-laden U.S. states, but the Great Smokies are the most-traveled national park in the country. Who knew? People just can't get enough of these waterfall-filled mountains. It also probably helps that you can choose to drive a scenic highway to get your fill or opt for hiking through the titular peaks.