It’s also worth checking out this NPS article about natural sounds recordist Jacob Job’s experience recording five parks for Colorado State University’s Listening Lab. But for a quick and easy sample, check out PARKTRACKS, a 12-minute mix that features chirping birds, elk calls, advancing rain, coyote howls, and cicadas singing. Unfortunately, they’re not curated into a playlist, so you’ll have to click individual tracks to external links to listen to them. (Trust us, it makes an overloaded inbox seem so much more manageable.) The National Park Service’s Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division maintains a library of park sounds, which includes bird sounds, animal calls, and different natural and wildlife soundscapes. You can turn these tunes on while you’re clicking through a virtual tour, or keep them on in the background to create a “work from a park” experience. Level up your virtual national park experience with soundscapes recorded at some of the NPS sites. Some even capture sights that you might never see otherwise, such as the Brooks Falls brown bear webcam in Alaska’s Katmai National Park-at times, we’ve seen around a dozen bears gathering to fish salmon out of the stream! Take in the New York skyline from the Statue of Liberty, admire the cherry blossoms at the National Mall, watch water cascade over Yosemite Falls, spot fish darting in and out of swaying kelp on the Channel Islands National Park ocean webcam, or peek at a bald eagle’s nest. These days, many national parks have webcams set up so that far-flung park lovers can enjoy the views. You may not be able to visit Yellowstone, but you can watch Old Faithful erupt from the comfort of your couch. These tours don’t include recorded narration, but like other Google Earth experiences, you could spend hours-days even!-clicking your way along pathways and spinning around to get full views of the park scenery at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Canyon de Chelly, Point Reyes National Seashore, Ellis Island, and more. Some of these are popular sites you may have visited or dream of visiting, such as Mount Rushmore or Alcatraz others you may never have heard of, including Florissant Fossil Beds in Colorado or Wupatki National Monument in Arizona. Google has also created 360-degree Google Earth tours of 113 national parks sites, including 31 parks and a number of monuments, historic sites, and seashores. Certain spots in each park also include extra 360-degree video experiences, such as a helicopter flyover at Hawaii Volcanoes, a horseback ride through Bryce Canyon’s hoodoos, and snorkeling in the coral reefs of Dry Tortugas. Virtual travelers can spin around to view the area as the rangers relate facts about the flora and fauna and the park history, then they can click on an icon to hop to a different section of the park. The series, The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks, was released in 2016 in honor of the National Park System’s (NPS) centennial celebration and focuses on lesser-known sites, including the Kenai Fjords in Alaska, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Utah’s Bryce Canyon, and Dry Tortugas in Florida.Įach tour features 360-degree photos of different spots in each park with short, one- to two-minute narrations from park rangers. ![]() ![]() Google Arts & Culture teamed up with the National Park Service to create free, immersive, guided tours through five national parks. And with virtual tours, webcams, sound recordings, and multimedia experiences, you can fill your living room with the sights and sounds of the national parks, recreating some incredible park experiences without ever leaving home. You can actually reap many of the mental health benefits of nature simply by looking at pictures of it. Instead, lace up your virtual hiking boots and get your national park fix online. Of course, for many of us, a stroll around the neighborhood just won’t scratch that nature itch like an invigorating hike in the Great Smokies or Rocky Mountain National Park would.īut as more and more parks close temporarily because of the coronavirus pandemic, we’re going to have to put our national park camping trips and weekend getaways on hold. There are real cognitive benefits to interacting with the natural world, which is why most shelter-in-place orders make exceptions for safe, socially distant outdoor recreation. Now is the time to stay at home to help “ flatten the curve” of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak spread, but that doesn’t mean you have to have to give up the great outdoors entirely.
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