I’d never heard of Sax-Zim bog before. I looked up on iNat and and it’s so diverse, even in the winter! I’ve got some family up in Minnesota. I’ll have to make a point to go visit at some point.
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What park is this? I know it has to be Pacific Northwest because I recognize western redcedar and Douglas-fir in picture 2; but the ferry in picture one is not one of the familiar Puget Sound ferries.
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For Rhode Island:
Beavertail State Park, Jamestown
Great to look for tidepools or shorebirds.
Audubon Fort Wildlife Refuge, North Smithfield
Beautiful, many interesting plants and insects.
Lincoln Woods State Park, Lincoln
My personal favorite, you can find dragonflies, fish, ferns, insects, deer, amphibians, and more.
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I was surprised to find that Badlands NP has an Open Hike Policy when I visited:
Badlands National Park has an Open Hike Policy, meaning that you are allowed to hike off-trail. As a visitor to the Badlands, you are free to explore social trails like Deer Haven, the Sage Creek Wilderness Area, or any other part of the park you can visit safely.
Please exercise caution while exploring the park in an Open Hike situation. Badlands formations are often easier to climb up than climb down and cell service is not readily available in the backcountry. If you encounter wildlife, maintain a distance of at least 100 feet. If wildlife notices you, you are too close.
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Looking at Petrified Forest NP, they do as well, you just get a (free) permit to do so if you are going to be out overnight. And it sounds like supposed to check in if doing a day one, says they offer gps routes if you want for suggested off trail routes.
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It is Bluffs park on Galiano Island, British Columbia.
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Oh also check out national forests and wilderness areas if in the US; seems to me most I have looked up allow it but with group size limits and (mostly obvious) rules basically LNT; camping limitations, fire restricitons (which are also seasonal at times), and some restrict animals off-trail (ex: sipsey allows no off trail stock animals - aka keep horses on trails for horses only). But usually these areas are so remote anyway staying on trail is quite wild still. For sipsy/bankhead here in AL only these things are prohibited for example. Also check the endangered lists, because some areas get closed /some seasons/etc for those. So limits…takes a bit of digging and isn’t always easy to find, but can probably find rules for wherever you are at. Sometimes contacting them direct is easiest than searching around old websites
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Nice! I wanted to do a longer hike. There were so many places to explore. But, I only had part of two days there. I was staying in Cupertino; so, I had a long drive.
I remember going to McClures Beach. I saw the elk along the way while driving. I saw a harrier hunting/hovering over a field before walking to the beach. There were some godwits on the beach in the surf. And, I saw purple starfish and anemones in the tidepools.
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I’d love to share with everyone here the beauty of our South African parks. I don’t have a favourite per se, as each one has its own character and unique attributes which allows it to stand out from the rest. But, one of the most absolute breathtaking parks I have and will probably ever visit, is Richtersveld National Park in the northwest corner of our country:
This park is bounded by the last northern arch of our great Orange River, which also forms the border between us and Namibia, and sits along the sub-escarpment far to the west of the Gariep Floristic Center. 80% of the succulents found in this park and the adjacent World Heritage Site are endemics (found nowhere else in the world), and a huge portion of those are extremely sensitive habitat specialists. The geological complexity of this park will leave even the most travelled and seasoned geologists at a loss for words, and new plant and insect species are being found here on a regular basis. This place really is a biologists wet dream! You will not find any desert in the world with a richer ensemble of taxa in the Mesembryanthemaceae family, nor any desert with such intricate pollination networks and species inter-dependencies. I’m so proud to call this park ours 
Stay tuned for more
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I have a friend from SA - i actually met her in london (she lived in london for a while before moving back to be with family) and i’ve always wanted to visit. the photos she shares are just gorgeous.
Frankly, as far as local parks, I will fight people over the quality of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I see it get rated as one of the worst national parks in the country, by people who might have passed through and glanced at it and then moved on - all the while ignoring the massive work that has had to happen to make the park (and as a small extension, the Cuyahoga River,) a viable nature space again instead of a scattered expanse of farmlands, golf courses, and defunct river dams. The massive value of having a national park in a state that has very little public land is incalcuable.
Allegheny National Forest and GSMNP are also high up there - Allegheny has some awesome trails with campsites that are only accessible via hiking or boating, so it cuts down on a lot of more obnoxious aspects of trying to camp in the Ohio/pennsylvania area. Meanwhile the smokies are… well, they’re the smokies. The west coast mountain ranges may be more impressive, but man, there’s something about the smokies that always brings me peace.
Allegheny
View from the top of mt. LeConte
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Does that mean the Cuyahoga River doesn’t catch on fire anymore 
? I did a summer research program at Kent State during undergrad, and learned about the 1969 river fire and subsequently learnt it had happened more than once (it still kind of amazes me that one time wasn’t enough to shut down the rubber industry in the area).
There’s a reason they’re called the Smokies…
Actually, the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway connecting them with the Shenandoah Skyline Drive really suck. Several reasons:
- There will be weather. Sometimes lots of it! Who really wants to get wet?
- Going fast on steep, curvy mountain roads will make you carsick. Ugh.
- No gas stations! Creepy mountain ghosts are just waiting for you to run out.
- There is no cell signal in the woods so your phone will be useless on hikes.
- Too much biodiversity and endemism for iNatting anyway, especially the plants.
So remember and tell all your friends: Stay away from the Smokies and the Parkway! Nothing to see around here. 
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Speak for yourself! I love driving mountain passes in Colorado and hearing the tires squeal around the corners.
Only 1 endemic Penstemon Penstemon smallii (Small’s Penstemon) , so it can’t be that diverse 
Here on the southernmost point of Africa, we also have Table Mountain National Park, which harbours the world-renowned Table Mountain, drawing in visitors from around the globe and covered in a beautiful ‘tablecloth’ of fog in the summer. This park is South Africa’s only urban National Park, with various hamlets, suburbs and villages straddling the Peninsula in and alongside it. This park is situated within the Fynbos Biome, a floral Kingdom restricted within the South African borders and one of the most species rich heathland environments you will find anywhere on earth - a proverbial wet dream for botanists!
A bulb flower
An old shipwreck on the rugged coast
An Erica species, with a superb pink colouring
A Klipspringer antelope, adapted to climbing steep and uneven rockfaces
I was privileged enough to have worked in this park for a year 
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That’s why we need fewer people visiting here so us locals can get the rollercoaster experience that these roads were designed for!
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I had never heard of BRP before but was driving from OH to SC in October - and at some point decided I need a break and turned off I-77 and ended up driving along it for a few miles… and there was 1000ds of gentians and orchids in bloom, just left and right of the road. It’s hard to believe such a road exists.
Only drawback, there’s several endemic gentian species there with little info on them and they seem impossible to id from my pictures. I think the inat AI just randomly assigned mine to G. decora, G. villosa, G. clausa but I always thought it could be endemic ones as well. And the orchids were all one or more kinds of Spiranthes that did not seem to match any of the accepted species, something between S. cernua and S. arcisepala.
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Oh, I’ll have to get to those parks someday!
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Oh yes, those can be tricky. Depending on where you are along the road, it could be any of 7 species of gentians or 8 species of lady’s tresses. Trying to sort out trilliums in the Smokies can be equally frustrating. Some of the endemics have very narrow ranges. I know of plant species that occur on only a handful of mountain tops and nowhere else in the world.
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I have a subaru with excellent tires for a REASON! 
