10 Must Visit San Francisco National Parks

Do you love National Parks? Are you going to the Bay Area? Then find out 10 must visit San Francisco National Parks to put on your to do list!

During our recent visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, we unexpectedly found ourselves at a national park site that we didn’t even know existed. Researching this a bit more, I was surprised to learn there are 10 national parks near San Francisco. Considering how much we love the national parks and seek them out everywhere we go, you might find it surprising that we didn’t know about these parks. To our defense, there are over 400 sites in the US that the National Park Services manages, many of these being lesser known sites of historical significance.

While images of extraordinary natural landscapes of places like Yosemite and Yellowstone pop to mind when talking of the national parks, there are a great deal of wonderful sites located in busy populated urban areas. Many famous and well visited tourist sites are also classified under the park system (i.e. The National Mall in Washington DC), which most people don’t even realize.

For people visiting (or living!) in the San Francisco area, there are a great deal of parks that are easily accessible no matter where your trips takes you. As with all of the NPS locations throughout the country, these attractions provide an educational and fun adventure for kids and their parents, not to mention the awesome junior ranger badges!

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Exploring Saguaro National Park in One Day

Saguaro National Park in One DayOne of our main reasons for our recent visit to Tucson was to explore Saguaro National Park. And to get a other junior ranger badge of course! Reading the name saguaro, you might not know exactly what it is (or even how to say it!), but once you see the iconic cactus often associated with Arizona and specifically the Sonoran Desert it will click. Considering how iconic this cactus is, you might be surprised to learn that this is the only part of the world that these famous catctus grow. The national park itself houses over 2 million saguaros, making it the most dense population of saguaro anywhere.

Researching the park was a bit confusing because the park bookends the city of Tucson with an east and west section. It is the only national park in the US that is not connected fully. Driving between the two districts takes a little more than an hour, so it’s important to know which area you want to visit if you have limited time. While reading about the park in advance of our trip, we couldn’t figure out which section was best, so we decided to explore it all and share the results with you here.

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