Exploring Our National Parks By Satellite

Recognize this one?

It’s the deepest river canyon in the United States.

Nope. Not the Grand Canyon. Instead, it’s Hells Canyon along the Oregon – Idaho border. 

The top rim of Hell’s Canyon is exactly 8,043′ above the Snake River down below. That makes it a half mile deeper than the Grand Canyon! I only learned that because of a really cool slideshow that NASA’s Earth Observatory has put together for National Park Week, which is underway.

From Yosemite National Park’s green image to White Sands National Monument’s bright white to Joshua Tree National Park’s brown sand this is a cool satellite slide show of our national parks.

For some reason, they did not include the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or Crater Lake in their slide show. So here’s a satellite image of the Grand Canyon and a satellite image of Yellowstone National Park and a satellite image of Crater Lake.

So even if you can’t head to these areas this summer…at least you can say you’ve been there…in a virtual reality sort of way!