Visiting the national parks, national monuments, wilderness areas, and state parks in the United States can be an adventure. I have been visiting, climbing, hiking and taking pictures in these parks for years. Certainly, you could say that almost every park is unique. I am an outdoors type of person and I enjoy fresh air, sunshine, and amazing views. These parks are wonderful for people who enjoy these types of activities:
o Hiking
o Camping
o Cycling
or ATV
o Scenic roads
o Horseback riding
o Wildlife
or Rafting
o Fishing
or Hunting
o Canyoning
o Photography
o Water sports and boat rides
o Caves and exploration
After all these years of traveling and exploring, the hardest part always seems to be research time. I will visit website after website to find the parks or areas of interest that I want to explore and then research where I am going to stay. Then to the task of mapping the details of the travel time so that the walk is comfortable as I go from the first place to the next activity, accommodation, etc. To solve this inefficiency, a group of outdoor enthusiasts has been creating a website with all of the National Parks, National Monuments, State Parks, and Wilderness Areas all located on one forum message board for adventurous travelers read, share and publish your travel reports. We purchased the adventurezonetours web domain name and have been busy loading basic data for each location. Now it’s all in one place.
So which park do you think is the most unique? I have always loved Glacier National Park in Montana and have been drawn to it from visit to visit. But, in recent years, I seem to have changed my mind. I headed towards Zion National Park in Utah and the slot canyons of the Southwest. Zion Canyon is just amazing. I also recently took my first trip to the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, also known as GSENM. It was actually just a quick trip through the monument on one of the remote wilderness highways that crosses from near Kodachrome State Park to southern Utah near the Arizona border. It may turn out to be the most unique. What you think?
All those hours of data uploading on the adventurezonetours message boards gave me a chance to see parks, monuments, and wilderness in the US and some areas I haven’t visited. A park stood out as something unique to me. It is in Michigan and I have not visited it. I doubt you have visited it either! The park is a state park called Meridian – Baseline State Park. It is not open to the public, so how could we have visited it? Here is the link for information about this park. Check it out!
http://www.adventurezonetours.com/index.php?showtopic=2032
So I guess since this park is not open to the public, it has me as something unique. Would you agree?
The Meridan – Baseline State Park is 88 acres and preserves a marker that was used for the Michigan Survey. Generally, this is what the bookmark retains.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, there were only thirteen states. The territory of the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River was in question. The new Continental Congress was asking these states to relinquish any claim of ownership of these lands to the federal government. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut claimed large portions of this land. A large part of Michigan had been chartered to Virginia from King James in 1609, at the time it was the Northwest Territory. In 1787 Congress established a territory in what is now Michigan. After a new territory grew to a population of 60,000 free citizens, it could petition Congress to become a state. This new state could have all the rights of the original 13 states. At that time a survey would be carried out and thus, in 1815 two men were hired to accurately establish the location of the baseline and the prime meridian that are preserved by this marker.