I captured this photograph while driving in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park and thought I would share this with you in honor of National Parks Week 2011.

I have also included for you a free downloadable copy of The Official Guide to America’s National Parks, published by the National Park Foundation.

Click to download —>  NPF-owners-guide-2011

Enjoy, and get out and enjoy one of your national parks!

This weekend begins National Park Week!

Here’s this from the National Park Foundation:

The National Park Foundation, the official charity of America’s national parks, is teaming up with the National Park Service to celebrate National Park Week 2011 April 16 – 24.

Beginning this Saturday, people everywhere are invited to experience America’s nearly 400 national parks which will be fee FREE all week. Celebrating the theme “Healthy Parks, Healthy People,” national parks across the country are encouraging people to come visit, get outdoors, and embrace a healthy lifestyle, while also embracing the importance of keeping our parks protected and preserved.

In honor of National Park Week, the National Park Foundation is releasing 10 great ways to celebrate:

• Visit a national park! There are nearly 400 national parks in America, and during National Park Week, they are all fee FREE. Take the time to go visit, and discover the magic of these treasured places. Start by visiting www.nationalparks.org/explore.

• Healthy Parks make Healthy People.  From hiking to biking to swimming, there are great outdoor activities in your national parks for visitors of all ages.  Start by getting the FREE National Park Foundation Owner’s Guide and Parks For Play: 35 National Park Adventures for Kids of All Ages.

• Show your support! As we celebrate National Park Week, take the time to consider what it would be like without these iconic places. Give today to the National Park Foundation and your gift will be MATCHED up to $50,000! With your help we can provide the necessary support to America’s nearly 400 national parks.

• Volunteer Day is April 16! Give back to the national parks that give so much to us. Find a complete listing of volunteer events.

• Become a Junior Ranger! Introduce a young person to our national parks on Junior Ranger Day, April 23. Through the Junior Ranger program kids learn about history, the environment and much more. At the end, each participant will be sworn in as a National Park Service Junior Ranger. Kids can also get active with the new “Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger” program celebrating First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative striving to end childhood obesity within a generation.

• “Check-In” on Facebook. Using Facebook “Places” on your mobile device, “check-in” at a national park and The North Face will donate $1 to the National Park Foundation! Just search for the national park near you using the latest version of the Facebook for iPhone app or by visiting https://touch.facebook.com/ from your HTML5-enabled mobile device.

• Meet a National Park Service Ranger! Do you know the people that help safeguard our national parks every day? Take the time to learn more about the National Park Service and the men and women that protect these special places. Get out and visit them or go to www.nps.gov to learn more.

• Share your adventure! Upload your photos, videos, poems or stories exclusively at facebook.com/nationalpark, and share your National Park Week experience with the world!

• Celebrate Earth Day in the parks! Take the time on April 22 to get outside to a national park and celebrate all the wonders and magical places that our planet has given us. In return, do the small things to show your appreciation like using environmentally-friendly transportation, recycling and supporting the National Park Foundation.

• Enter the “I Heart Parks” contest! Go to www.facebook.com/nationalpark for the opportunity to win daily prizes from the National Park Foundation including park passes, outdoor gear, and a trip to Shenandoah National Park!

For more information on National Park Week, and a full listing of events, including details on park-specific Earth Day events (April 22), Junior Ranger Day activities (April 23), and ways to lend a hand in local parks on Volunteer Day (April 16), visit www.nationalparkweek.org.

The Grand Canyon – I must confess, when I first stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, I was so taken with the beauty of the place that a tear found its way down my cheek.

I shot this particular photograph towards the very end of the day, and the light was seemingly changing the color and drama of the canyon every second.

The shadows were moving in from the left, and the saturation of colors on the rocks to the right were a wonder to behold.

It’s hard to grasp the scale of this photograph, but the Colorado river, snaking through the left side of the photograph, is over one mile beneath my feet.

Alcatraz Island is now part of the National Park Service, and you get to the island via Alcatraz Cruises, a private ferry company under contract with the National Park Service.  You should also know that space is limited and reservations are a must as they are frequently sold out weeks in advance.

When visiting Alcatraz Island, you should plan for at least a half-day.  During our visit we enjoyed an informative introductory video, and then opted for a well produced audio-guided tour.

The tour explained that Alcatraz was at first a military fort, and then a federal penitentiary.  Further, after the penitentiary closed, the island was taken over and occupied by American Indians before finally becoming a part of the National Park Service in the 1970s.

Disclosure:  our Alcatraz Island experience was provided by the cool folks at Alcatraz Cruises.  Thank you!  We had a great time.

About an hour southeast of Phoenix, adjacent to the town of Coolidge, Arizona, lies the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.

Presumed to have been built around 1350, Casa Grande is one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, and its purpose remains a mystery.

“Archeologists have discovered evidence that the ancient Sonoran Desert people who built the Casa Grande also developed wide-scale irrigation farming and extensive trade connections which lasted over a thousand years until about 1450 C.E.

The Casa Grande was abandoned around 1450 C.E. Since the ancient Sonoran Desert people who built it left no written language behind, written historic accounts of the Casa Grande begin with the journal entries of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino when he visited the ruins in 1694. In his description of the large ancient structure before him, he wrote the words “casa grande” (or “great house”) which are still used today.” (National Park Service)

Before touring the ruins of the ancient Hohokam, we spent about 45 minutes visiting the museum, and also watched an informative 15 minute video.

Casa Grande is 4 Stories Tall

To help give you a perspective on the scale of Casa Grande, you can see Carol standing at Casa Grande’s front door in this photograph.

Another very interesting fact about these ancient people is that they were very industrious, and created a massive canal system that would bring water from the nearby Gila River.  This canal system allowed them to irrigate the land, and thereby have an agricultural system in the middle of the dry, arid desert.

As we were driving to Casa Grande, the intermittently green fields in the middle of the desert demonstrated that a similar irrigation system is evidently still in use today.  In fact, for miles on our journey, we watched workman building canals along the side of the road.

When you visit Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, you will want to pack a picnic lunch and enjoy watching scores of ground squirrels playing under the shade of the mesquite trees.  Your children perhaps will remember this entertainment the most.

We have visited many prehistoric sites in the Southwest, but this one is by far the largest structure we have encountered, and it is plain to see why this site became our country’s very first national monument.

His polite, but very quick answer was, “Dave, even if you were the New York Times Travel Editor, we are so busy,  we simply couldn’t accommodate you.”

He went on to say that the NPR series on National Parks has stirred a renewed interest in the parks, and their reservations are WAY up.

This is also obviously the same in Yellowstone National Park as they have just set an all-time visitation record for the month of June:

“Nearly 700,000 visitors came to Yellowstone National Park during June. It marks the second record June in a row, and the third record June out of the last four years. Visitor numbers this June are 100,000 higher than those recorded in June 2008.

Visitor numbers were up at all four entrances when compared to year-ago levels, with double-digit increases reported through the East and Northeast Entrances.

The West Entrance remains the park’s busiest, with over 280,000 visitors recorded this June, compared to just over 261,000 a year ago.

Visitation to the park for the first six months of the year is over the one million mark, up 5.3 percent over the same period a year ago.

July is typically the park’s peak visitation month, followed by August, June, September, and May.

Yellowstone hosted a record number of visitors in 2009. Nearly 3.3 million people visited the world’s first national park last year, up 7.5% from 2008 and up 4.6% from the previous record of 3.15 million visitors set in 2007.”

It is very clear that The Roaming Boomers will have to do their visiting in the less busy shoulder seasons, and we are most happy to see our National Parks so busy.

Note:  photograph of Yellowstone’s Castle Geyser is from the Yellowstone National Park’s website.

Tubac is a popular Arizona destination because of its quaint, beautiful setting with 10,000 foot mountain views in the background, and its reputation for having a large collection of unique artist boutiques.  But that is for another story.

The Tumacacori Mission was founded by the Jesuits in 1691, and over the course of the next 100 years became the regions most powerful social and economic force.  In 1848 the mission was abandoned as a result of political problems between Spain, Mexico, and the United States.

Tumacacori is a short 10-minute drive from Tubac, and is a worthy diversion from shopping in the art boutiques.

Here are a few of my photographs from Tumacacori National Historical Park:

We absolutely love our National Parks, and intend to showcase a great many of them here in our website.

As is the case with our “destinations” section, we don’t want to simply rehash old memories for you.  We would much prefer to share our experiences with you as they are happening.

Therefore, stay tuned here, there will be lots of exciting information, photographs, videos, and all around excitement as we share our nation’s National Parks with you.

I can’t wait!