Welcome to the Park Avenue Photo Friday diary and open thread. Each Friday, people are encouraged to join us in sharing their pictures of the national parks, state parks and other major parks and to vote on which park will be the subject of our next Things to Know Before You Come column of travel advice and tips on visiting the parks.
If you haven't had the chance yet, check out our two other weekly diaries from this week. Each Tuesday at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we release our Things to Know Before You Come column looking at hints and tips for visiting a park you choose each week in this open thread (see poll below). Parks cover by our past columns are:
Help choose next week's column by voting below. Each week's runner-up will return to the poll the following week. Last week's runner-up was Great Smokey Mountains (though it passed up the winner Glacier Bay afterwards).
On Thursdays at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we have our weekly user contributed park feature. Our past features have been
- Jackson Hole National Monument
- Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine
- Capitol Reef National Park
- Petrified Forest National Park
- Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
- Dry Tortugas National Park
Next week, birdbrain64 will be featuring Wind Cave National Park and Jewel Cave National Monument in South Dakota. Following that, we have Ed in Montana's feature on Death Valley National Park and musing85 writing about Zion National Park. If you are interested in writing a feature about a park, please volunteer at out
sign up form and as your window approaches, you'll be contacted (about 3 weeks before) to finalize your date.
And now some photos...
Abbey Island from Ruby Beach in Olympic National Park at sunset
One of the fallen giants in Petrified Forest National Park
One of my favorite spots in the world, at the Old Patriarch in Grand Teton National Park
And finally, we had a question on whether we'll be including the Canadian National Parks in our group. Canada has some very fine parks as well and this site definitely has its fair share of Canucks, so I have no problem whatsoever with this, but thought I'd open it up for discussion while sneaking in one of my images from a Canadian park. This was taken in Waterton Lakes National Park, park of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park straddling the border between the U.S. and Canada. From Maskinonge Lake I captured this evening scene with the moon hovering over Sofa Mountain.