The Most Unique Park In The USA?
By Bob Therrien
The word unique will have different meaning to different
people, and not all will agree on which park is the most
unique. I have found one park that just struck me as unique. I
wonder if you will agree.
Visiting the National Parks, National Monuments, Wilderness
areas and State Parks in the United States can be an adventure.
I’ve been visiting, climbing, hiking and taking photographs in
these parks for years. Certainly, I could say that almost every
park is unique. I am an outdoors type of person and enjoy the
fresh air, sunshine and incredible views. These parks are
wonderful for people who enjoy these types of activities:
•Hiking
•Camping
•Cycling
•ATV
•Scenic Drives
•Horseback Riding
•Wildlife
•Rafting
•Fishing
•Hunting
•Canyoneering
•Photography
•Water sports and boating
•Caves and exploring
After all these years of traveling and exploring the hardest
part always seems to be the research time. I’ll visit website
after website finding the parks or areas of interest that I
want to explore, then onto researching where I’m going to stay.
Then to the task of mapping out the travel time details to make
the trek comfortable as I go from the first location to the
next activity, to the accommodations and so on. To solve this
inefficiency a group of us outdoor enthusiasts have been
creating a website with all the National Parks, National
Monuments, State Parks and Wilderness Areas all located in one
forum message board for adventure travelers to read, share and
post their trip reports. I invite you to visit. We bought the
web domain name adventurezonetours and have been busy loading
basic data for each location. Now it’s all in one place.
So, which park do you think is the most unique? I have always
just loved Glacier National Park in Montana and have been drawn
back for visit after visit. But, in the last couple of years I
seem to be changing my mind. I’ve been turned onto Zion
National Park in Utah and the slot canyons of the southwest.
Zion Canyon is just awesome. I have also recently taken my
first journey into the Grand Staircase Escalante National
Monument also known as GSENM. It was really just a quick trip
through the monument on one of the remote wilderness roads that
crosses from near Kodachrome State Park to Southern Utah, near
the Arizona border. It may turn out to be the most unique.
Which park do you think is most unique?
All those hours of loading data in the AdventureZoneTours
message boards gave me a chance to see parks, monuments and
wilderness areas in the USA, and some areas I have not visited.
One park stood out as a bit unique to me. It is in Michigan and
I have not visited it. I doubt that you have visited it either!
The park is a state park called Meridian - Baseline State Park.
It is not open to the public, so how could we have visited it?
So, I guess since this park is not open to the public, it has
struck me as very unique. Would you agree?
The Meridan – Baseline State Park is 88 acres and preserves a
marker that was used for the Michigan Survey. In general here
is what the marker preserves.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, there were only thirteen
states. The territory of land between the Appalachian Mountains
and the Mississippi River were in question.
The new Continental Congress was asking these states to give up
any claims of ownership of these lands to the federal
government. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all
claimed large chunks of this land. A large chunk of Michigan
had been chartered to Virginia from King James in 1609, at the
time this was the Northwest Territory. In 1787 a territory was
established by congress in what is now Michigan. After a new
territory grew to a population of 60,000 free citizens, it
could petition Congress to become a state. This new state could
then have all the rights of the original 13 states. At that time
a survey would happen and thus, in 1815 two men were hired to
establish accurately the location of the base line and the
principal meridian which are preserved by this marker.
About The Author:
Bob Therrien is a travel writer and has
traveled all over North America. He currently operates the
website at www.adventurezonetours.com He invites you to
visit, share, and post your outdoor recreation travel details.
