But it’s worth less now so you used to basically be rich.
The National Park System and Service deserve our tax money, our support and patronage. The parks, battlefields, historic sites and recreation areas. All of it.
Go West, young man. FWIW I'm definitely picking BIG WYO every time as a travel destination over punk ass Swede descendant Minnesota, much less goofy ass Wuhscahnsin (no offense @BFoe and @mkess101). 
Ultra-dry Death Valley has a temporary lake thanks to extreme rainfall
Death Valley may be the driest place in the US, but a large lake has now formed there because of severe rainwww.newscientist.com
HOW WE GONNA PAY FOR IT?
Oh, man. Fuck that.
Wyoming has the triple crown of possessing America's first national park, first national forest, and first national monument. The federal government owns half the state, and the other half is eerily desolate high plains. It's the least populous state and the most conservative with the highest amount of firearms per capita by a laughably insane margin. Oddly enough, it was also the first state that allowed women the right to vote and the first to elect a female governor. The I-80 is probably the most dangerous highway in the entire country (and not because of gun related crime).
For my $$$: Yellowstone is not only the epitome of the Old West and American Frontier; it's the most hallowed ground and #1 destination in the entire country, the most unique place on the entire planet. It was the world's first national park and would be one of the world's greatest national parks for geothermal activity alone; its concentration and diversity of wildlife alone; its scenic beauty and landscapes of forests, canyons, valleys, meadows, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls alone.
It is the location of one of the world's largest supervolcanoes and has more active hydrothermal features (geysers, hot springs, mud pots, steamvents, travertine terraces) than the rest of the entire planet combined; the highest concentration of ungulates (bison, moose, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, big horn sheep), predators (grizzly bears, black bears, mountain lions, gray wolves) and birds of prey (bald eagles, golden eagles, ospreys, peregrine falcons) in the contiguous USA; the largest freshwater alpine lake above 7,000 feet in North America, the longest, most wild, and practically only undammed river left in America, with over 250 waterfalls across its 2.2 million acres to boot.
Grand Teton just south is really god damn pretty (and is actually part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem); but then so is Glacier (in Montana). So is Banff (in Alberta). And so is, and so is, and so is in various countries and continents across the world. Yellowstone is straight up fucking unbelievable literally and figuratively, there is objectively no other place like it on Earth.
Maybe the one party state's radical ideas, policies, and environmental regulations will eventually yield some benefit to its natural spaces, but California looks cooked. There are so many things that contribute to this, not the least of which are absolutely massive coastal population centers that blow their toxic smog across the state, enormous agriculture and industrial operations up and down the central valley that do much of the same, numerous severe drought years since the turn of the century, and in turn extreme wildfire devastation. It makes sense that Joshua Tree makes the list given the proximity to LA and all of its garbage but Death Valley having pollution issues is fucked up, that shit isn't right.
01. Glacier (Montana)
02. Yellowstone (Wyoming)
03. Yosemite (California)
04. Grand Canyon (Arizona)
05. Grand Teton (Wyoming)
06. Zion (Utah)
07. Denali (Alaska)
08. Kenai Fjords (Alaska)
09. Bryce Canyon (Utah)
10. Redwood (California)
11. Arches (Utah)
12. Sequoia (California)
13. Olympic (Washington)
14. Hawai'i Volcanoes (Hawaii)
15. Mount Rainier (Washington)
I often forget that place even exists, same for the Guadalupe Mountains. Texas is not my jam but uh, good for Texans and their proud culture stuff and power grids, I guess. I'm still absolutely baffled that my cousin and her husband gave up their ranch in Wyoming to go live over there.
HOW WE GONNA PAY FOR IT?
Oh, man. Fuck that.
Wyoming has the triple crown of possessing America's first national park, first national forest, and first national monument. The federal government owns half the state, and the other half is eerily desolate high plains. It's the least populous state and the most conservative with the highest amount of firearms per capita by a laughably insane margin. Oddly enough, it was also the first state that allowed women the right to vote and the first to elect a female governor. The I-80 is probably the most dangerous highway in the entire country (and not because of gun related crime).
For my $$$: Yellowstone is not only the epitome of the Old West and American Frontier; it's the most hallowed ground and #1 destination in the entire country, the most unique place on the entire planet. It was the world's first national park and would be one of the world's greatest national parks for geothermal activity alone; its concentration and diversity of wildlife alone; its scenic beauty and landscapes of forests, canyons, valleys, meadows, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls alone.
It is the location of one of the world's largest supervolcanoes and has more active hydrothermal features (geysers, hot springs, mud pots, steamvents, travertine terraces) than the rest of the entire planet combined; the highest concentration of ungulates (bison, moose, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, big horn sheep), predators (grizzly bears, black bears, mountain lions, gray wolves) and birds of prey (bald eagles, golden eagles, ospreys, peregrine falcons) in the contiguous USA; the largest freshwater alpine lake above 7,000 feet in North America, the longest, most wild, and practically only undammed river left in America, with over 250 waterfalls across its 2.2 million acres to boot.
Grand Teton just south is really god damn pretty (and is actually part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem); but then so is Glacier (in Montana). So is Banff (in Alberta). And so is, and so is, and so is in various countries and continents across the world. Yellowstone is straight up fucking unbelievable literally and figuratively, there is objectively no other place like it on Earth.
Not a single damn one east of the Rockies, lol.
Teton is such a Don.
I don't think too many people get up to Denali or Kenai, but point taken. Redwood isn't even among the top five most visited national parks in the state of California. It has always blown my mind that the SFO Bay Area in so-called 'Northern California' is like 350 miles south of RNSP. You can drive clear out to Albuquerque, New Mexico from LAX faster than it'll take you to get up to Crescent City. There are no lodging options in the park and it's all the better for it -- I wish they'd tear all that Xanterra and Delaware North shit down and out of Yellowstone.
The Utah parks have been getting slammed for the last decade, but that's what the state tourism board wanted when it launched the whole "Mighty Five" propaganda campaign in 2013. My desire to visit them is admittedly just so damn low, simply because Arizona already has enough orange and red sedimentary rocks. If I want a CO Plateau national park, I'll go to the fucking Grand Canyon okay. Please, funnel all the Chinese nationals up to Utah.
Amazing picture.
But it looks like the NPS ranger in this thread is trying to sell you on Colliefornia instead. For all I detest about its politics, the place is admittedly - objectively - extraordinary. I just prefer Wyoming in part due to being an 89er state and growing up in that region of the country. NoDak, SoDak, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho comprise the Great American West, and all of them wrote or finalized their state constitutions in 1889. There's a familiarity in culture and way of life up to present day. 
You should walk into the bedroom and very matter of fact-ly announce to your wife where the once in a lifetime holiday destination is going to be.
I promote the hell out of it to everyone I talk to on here - you, @Bald1, @ElKarlo (RIP), @Islam Imamate, @Mr Holmes, @Fox by the Sea, @Long Dark Blues, @Cole train...But aside from patches of badlands and oil fields on their western edges and mid-size cities like Fargo and Sioux Falls along the eastern borders, 90% of the land in both of the Dakotas is still devoted entirely to farming and ranching. They play a vital role in American agriculture; it's home and has a beauty of its own, but there is incredibly little to see or do from an outsider's tourist perspective. In fact, there is virtually nothing aside from the Black Hills National Forest area that spreads into Wyoming.
And BIG WYO is an entirely different animal, in more ways than you can shake a stick at. IMO, it's the only state in the union - at least in the contigious 48 - that can fuck with California for scenic beauty and natural wonders, and it does that despite being a landlocked state without any beaches or coastline to speak of. A road trip through there is the essence of vintage America for me. The contrasts are extreme: California has a population of 39 million (by far the largest in the country) and the most extreme left-wing politics in the nation; Wyoming has 584,000 local residents (easily the least in the country) and is the most politically conservative.
There's potentially an interesting thread to be made about all of this.
C'mon, bruh. Of course. You can find that in every gateway town outside any of Yellowstone's entrances, lol.
