National Parks Celebration Continues In Consumer Travel Media

Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Photo: mashpedia

The U.S. National Parks system continues to fill the pages of popular travel sections as the country celebrates the network’s centennial all year, with the New York Times and Lonely Planet both featuring the parks this week.

The New York Times Travel Section on Sunday was dubbed the “National Parks Issue,” with a two-page spread that included black-and-white photographs by Clyde Butcher, who has been photographing the parks for more than 50 years. The Times sent out authors to five of the most popular parks to capture them in essay form. Included are Badlands National Park, Grant Teton, Acadia, Glacier and the Grand Canyon.

Additionally, Jeremy Cronon offered 11 rules for maximizing a National Park road trip, traversing 32,000 miles over 10 months, and Daniel Jones took readers on a vintage raft tour of the Grand Canyon as well.

The Times also squeezed in an update on six new New York City hotels, including  Manhattan’s AKA Wall Street and The Redbury New York, and Brooklyn’s EVEN hotels (two, including midtown and downtown locations) and The William Vale. They also offer advice for a weekend in Cleveland, the host of the Republican convention this campaign year, and tour Vermeer’s Netherlands birthplace, Delft.

Meanwhile, 12 pages of bright colorful photos and travel guides make up the big National Parks centerpiece of Lonely Planet’s summer issue. The magazine focuses in on 10 parks, including Yosemite, Great Smoky Mountains, Big Bend in Texas, Badlands in South Dakota and Everglades National Park. For the bigger park guides, Lonely Planet includes side trips to other nearby National Parks.

Lonely Planet also spends a few pages providing an “Insider’s Guide to Europe,” with six lesser-known tours of popular cities. The magazine enlists hotel concierges to dig up some cool finds, like Rione Monti, Rome’s oldest neighborhood, and Streetfood Thursday, a weekly Berlin food and music event.

Editor Lauren Finney joins New Orleans chef Alon Shaya for a tour of the Crescent City, including Shaya’s favorite Cajun restaurants.  Lonely Planet visits 10 islands and tries to match them to readers’ personalities (e.g., Caye Caulker, Belize; Block Island, RI; Boracay, Philippines), and heads out on a safari cruise along the Zambezi River in northern Zimbabwe.