To celebrate America's amazing national parks, Lonely Planet, the world's leading travel publisher, takes you on an informative and gorgeous tour of all 59 parks with our lavishly finished hardcover gift guide packed with detailed itineraries and practical tips on what to do and see in each park to get you started planning your next adventure. America's national parks are full of timeless marvels that still rejuvenate the soul: the world's largest trees in Sequoia; its most spectacular geothermal site in Yellowstone; the grandest canyon. Perhaps the movement's most eloquent description that still resonates came from national parks advocate John Muir: 'Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity ... ' Fortunately for the nerve-shaken, over-civilized people of then and now, President Woodrow Wilson created the National Parks Service (NPS) on August 25, 1916, though the drive to p