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.
Our Weekly Diaries
Follow us each week with out other two weekly diaries. Each Tuesday at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we have 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). Our previous columns have covered:
Help choose next week's column by voting below. Each week's runner-up will return to the poll the following week.
On Thursdays at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we release 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
- Wind Cave National Park & Jewel Cave Natl Monument
- Death Valley National Park
- Zion National Park
- Saguaro National Park
- Everglades National Park
- Rocky Mountain National Park
- Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve
On Saturdays, we release our newest series of features, Our State Parks, looking at, you guessed it, state parks. The series is just getting its feet off the ground. Here are the parks looked at so far:
- Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Colorado
- Ricketts Glen State Park, Pennsylvania
- Itasca State Park, Mississippi
- Ona State Park, Oregon
If you are interested in writing a feature about a park, please volunteer at our sign up form and as your window approaches, you'll be contacted (a few weeks before) to finalize your date.
Additionally, if any of you are interested in writing other pieces about the parks or park related topics (eg. the CCC, History of the National Park Service, Biographical sketches of park related people, the science behind a park or parks, a look at native American cultures whose ruins are protected as parks, etc) feel free to submit those features. Just ask for an invite as a contributor and we'll get you set up. I think it'd be nice if we branch out into more than just our three regular features.
Pictures!
I had a hard time coming up with a theme I liked for this week, so let's just call this the allure of mountains. Thanks to the Flickr Creative Commons system for the photos...
Mount Rainier St. Helens
Crater Lake
Denali
Yosemite
Death Valley
Grand Teton
Lake Clark
Photo Credits: Bala, Gord McKenna, Nic McPhee, Christopher Chan, Pedro Szekely, Paul Martin, Dan Oberlatz for National Parks Conservation Association. All images republished in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons license under which they were originally published and released. Some rights reserved.