Top Ten Alternative National and State Parks

Lassen Volcanic National Park

If it's geothermal features you're after, check out California's Lassen Volcanic National Park , where gurgling mudpots, boiling acid pools, and hissing fumaroles (like in the area called Bumpass Hell where vents shoot steam and volcanic gas as hot as 322 degrees) wow fewer than 380,000 people per year.

Yosemite National Park: Spring Backpacking

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5. Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming
(Instead of Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming)
Bridger-Teton National Forest is an immense swath of wildlands in the northwest corner of Wyoming. Its 3.4 million acres of mountains, forests, and meadows make up a large part of the critical Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Yellowstone National Park borders the park to the north). Grizzly and black bears, elk, bighorn sheep, moose, and even grey wolves can be spotted from more than 2,200 miles of trails. Bridger-Teton is loaded with serrated granite peaks (including the state's highest, 13,804-foot Gannett Peak) and tons of glacier-carved cirques and valleys that hold more than 2,300 cold, crystalline ponds and lakes. Paddlers can battle white water on the Gros Venter, Hoback, and Lower Snake rivers, and anglers can ply more than 800 streams for rainbow and native cutthroat trout and others. Seasonal rock climbing, mountain biking, ice climbing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, and dog-sledding are all doable among Bridger-Teton's aspen, spruce, fir, and pine forests, where bald eagles, yellow-bellied marmots, beavers, and energetic pika outnumber humans.

GORP's Bridger-Teton National Forest Guide