past 20 years. Our most enjoyable experiences have been in places that are NOT national parks. As far as national parks, the two that I'd put tops on the list are Smokey Mountain National Park and Grand Teton. I'd rank the Smokies as 1A and Grand Teton as 1B.

One of the big drawbacks to national parks is the sheer volume of people at most of them. For getting outdoors and into the "wild" areas of America to enjoy the outdoor beauty, there's noting that kills the joy more than having to jostle and elbow your way through big crowds of people to see stuff. We still visit National Parks, but we tend to make them one of several local destinations and rarely make plans to spend more than 1 or 1/2 a day at any one of them.

For most national parks, there are local state parks or forest service areas that are very comparable with significantly fewer crowds. For example, instead of spending a week in the Smokey Mountains, we'll typically spend 4 days in Fall Creek Falls State Park (TN) and maybe a day or two in the Smokies.

Mammoth Cave is named because of the size of the caverns in the cave system. There are very few rock formations in the cave. They're mostly big, giant, caverns. I'd much rather go to Onandoga Cave in Onandoga State Park (MO), where there are amazing rock formations in all weird and strange colors in the cave. At the national park (Mammoth Cave), by contrast, you're just packed in like sardines to look at giant underground holes.

The Grand Canyon is big, but I'd much rather go to the Black Canyon (CO) and go around the back side to the north rim and be able to walk the edge of the canyon without seeing more than 10-15 other people all day. The Black Canyon was recently updated to a National Park status, but it's historically been a national monument, and the north rim is still treated that way (no on-site park rangers, unpaved roads, etc.). Plus if I was going out in that area, I'd spend a day at the Black Canyon and then camp for a week in the Gunnison area and do the loop through Pitkin and Tincup or head down south towards Ouray and Durango/Silverton. That's a much better sounding vacation than the Grand Canyon.

Niagra Falls is technically a state park (NY), but it has the popularity of a National Park. It's OK for a few hours, but I'd rather spend my time in upstate New York at Watkins Glen or Stony Brook State Parks.

If you're considering Bryce Canyon NP, a better alternative IMO is Cedar Breaks, where you'll find less people and similar types of structures and activities. Cedar Breaks is a National Monument (not a state park), but it's significantly less crowed than Bryce.