Grand Canyon National Park

The Grand Canyon is perhaps America’s most famous and second-most popular national park, and with good reason. Its size and scale don’t completely translate no matter how many photos or videos you see; the park’s sheer magnitude has to be experienced first-hand to be properly appreciated.

From every viewpoint, and each trail, the vista changes throughout the day, with colors popping as ever-evolving cloud patterns and changing sunlight reveal new details by the hour. It’s a destination world-renown for the grandeur you really can’t see anywhere else on the planet. Tourists flock here to the tune of six million per year. Only Great Smoky Mountains National Park (12 million visitors) is more popular in terms of annual visitors.

Over 18 miles across at its most expansive, and generally about a mile deep, the edge of the canyon feels like the end of the Earth. The Colorado River that washes though the canyon for 277 miles first cut its path roughly six million years ago.