When most people hear the term “National Park”, they automatically think of names such as “Yellowstone”,
or “Yosemite”, or “Grand Canyon”. The big parks’ names bring to mind vast stretches of undisturbed
wilderness perfect for hiking, camping, and nature-watching. But while this vision of America’s National Parks
is wholly accurate and sufficiently breathtaking, there’s more.
America’s National Park system has an incredible 388 places to visit. This number includes not only the big
parks, but also monuments, historical sites, recreation areas, battlefields, as well as scenic lakeshores, and
rivers. And the Parks themselves don’t just stop at geyser-fields and mule-excursions. In America’s National
Parks, you can climb an active volcano in Hawaii, “spelunk” the vast underground world of Mammoth Cave in
Kentucky, dive the exotic coral reef of Biscayne Bay in Florida, or cast your fishing nets in the far reaches of
the Pacific with the locals of America Samoa. Each of these 388 places has a unique appeal – from the natural
to the manmade, from the ethereal to the factual, from the subtle to the overwhelming – with the whole
collection offering vacationers a nearly endless range of interests and activitists in which to explore and
indulge.
SeeAmerica.org is a great place to begin planning your trip to one of, or several of, America’s National
Parks. From the home pages, you can search all of the Parks by name, region, activity, or even zip code. The
site also serves as a portal to other important sites, like the Nartional Park Sevice’s official website,
www.nps.gove, and the National Park Foundation’s www.nationalparks.org. From SeeAmerica.org, you can get
to all the information you will need to plan your trip from start to finish- from directions to the park, to park
free, to typical weather conditions.
Question 39: The word “breathtaking” mostly means_________?
A. extremely impressive B. not bad C. uninteresting D. not shocking
