Ken Burns' National Parks: What's Your Favorite Rocky Mountain Park? (PHOTOS, VOTE)

Ken Burns has created yet another cinematic masterpiece with "National Parks: America's Best Idea" which chronicles the history of the United States national park system. In Colorado, we're fortunate to have many of the parks featured in the 12-hour long series no more than a day's drive away.

We want to know which Rocky Mountain national parks are your favorites to visit. Vote on the slideshow below, then click the participate button to send in your national park photos. When all the photos have been submitted, we'll create a slide show for readers to vote on the very best photos

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Great Sand Dunes National Park

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Comments

[dobberdoss]

Yosemite hands down! love that place! follow closely by Zion

[PepeLepew]

Glacier! Hands down!

[MossyOak]

Glacier... make that four hands down.

[JoJoRae]

Crater lake is my favorite. It was the first one I visited, the last one I went to with my father before he died. It is the memories as much as the how amazing it is in person that makes it my favorite. I will put Acadia second and Carlsbad third. I will be moving to Hawaii next month and can't wait to hike Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. I have been wanting to do that since I was a child and thanks to the Army I will have 3 years to do it.

I loved every minute of the series, yeah Burns was sappy at times but a little sap never hurt anyone. If you can't understand why someone was crying when they were talking about a National Park I hope one day you have an experience where you realize how big and amazing the world is and the little part you play in it all, then I think you will understand.

[AmandaBC]

Hmm, Banff? Pacific Rim? Kootenay?

Oh wait, wrong country... :)

Seriously, the Four Corner region is my favourite in the US. Really unique: Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley in UT, Mesa Verde in CO, Shiprock, Bisti/DeNazin in NM, Canyon de Chelly, Lake Powell in AZ.

[HermesThoth]

I actually love the Kootenays, Banff, the Islands; but living near Canyon de Chelly as I do, I just can't get enough of Southwest.

[AmandaBC]

Among other places in NM, I visited Bisti/DeNaZin last spring, and I thought it was the most incredible landscape I've ever seen. It's not a NP yet (National Wilderness Area) and there are no rangers or marked paths. Basically without a hand-held GPS you can easily get lost in one of the most impervious areas in the Southwest. On our way back, we were even caught by a sandstorm. After weeks and countless showers, I could still find grains of sand hidden in my body...
I think they should make it into a NP, but then again the terrain is so frail, mass tourism would probably turn it into a dump in a matter of months.

http://parkerlab.bio.uci.edu/nonscientific_adventures/Bisti%20Badlands.htm

[PepeLepew]

I climbed Fairview Mountain in Banff in August!

[sgmorr]

I loved the National Parks series. The history of the parks is absolutely amazing. I loved the visual aspects of the series, especially the archival footage and archival stills. Of course we can find modern color photos and videos of the parks everywhere, but to put it all together in the telling of the history of the parks and of the American conservation movement is something that appealed very much to me. We are very lucky that we've saved as much of our natural landscape as we have. It's amazing first of all that Americans had the foresight to start saving our precious natural lands as early as they did, and it's also amazing that developers had their sights fixed on many of these same lands as early as they did also. Parts of the series were just incredible. I had not realized that Yosemite and Yellowstone owe so much to the protection they received from the U.S. Army in the early days before Congress established the National Park Service and started funding the maintenance and upkeep of the parks.

[NHBill]

It was incredibly over-wrought. The same violin music that was so moving in The Civil War just seems ridiculous in this show. Jeez guys were crying about going to the parks! Come on it is beautiful but it's also fun. Where were the jokes, the laughs the good times! They made going to the parks like going to a funeral! And 12 hours of it!!! Really PBS? You are constantly begging for money so you can blow it on 12 hours of schmaltzy National Parks shows?? I have seen every show Burns has ever done. Most are simply brilliant, some are a bit dry but this was just preposterous!

[ColoradoDan]

I am really enjoying Burns job on the National Parks so far. Yes he has a familiar style and it works grandly with this series as well. Some folks probably need Mario and Luigi bouncing from Park to Park to keep them amused but I will take the old footage and photos and great early tales, decent music and warm narration.

Very hard to choose a favorite though. Colorado and Utah have so many wonderful locales.

[urbanopolis]

Burns' format is getting very old and dated.
Absolutely predictable....

slow zoom on a still photo
solo banjo americana music
Pete Coyote narration

voila! Ken (boring)Burns

[NHBill]

Second that!

His approach was a total no fit to the subject matter!

[Khirad]

I sort of thought they might've done better to save Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde for a Southwest poll and maybe substituted Zion for at least one, but eh, whatever. Quite surprised I've been to 7/11 of these - thank my parents, I guess. I have to say, that as a kid, Mesa Verde and the Four Corners area was one of the most magical places I could imagine - especially being a kid more accustomed to the Cascades of my home state. A similar site in SW New Mexico called Gila Cliff Dwellings I would also recommend, gorgeous area of that state, monsoon rains struck when I was there. I like all the places I've been to in this though, and sure the other four are great as well.

[TazoWolf]

Where's Cedar Breaks park? That one was gorgeous, and I loved it for the lack of crowds.

[PoliticalJunkie67]

In Utah. Technically, Cedar Breaks is a national monument. It's really spectacular and a lot of tourists skip it because it's close to Bryce and Zion, which are better known national parks.

[AmandaBC]

As far as I remember, it's right between Zion and Bryce. If you go from one to another, you can't miss it...

[radrave]

Am I the only one completely bored by the series? Pompous, jingoistic, and overly literary, it's hard to call this a film at all . . . its really a tiresome 8hour audio tape with pictures (many great shots -- I get those shooters had a great time!). But Ken Burns has become a bore.

[NHBill]

I thought I was the only one! It was awe-full!

[MyrtleJune]

I'm loving EVERY moment of Ken Burns' series!!!! As a kid my parents took us camping to most every Nation Park in the West and a couple in the east. In particular we spend alot of time in Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon. Then we moved to Arizona and 60 miles from the Grand Canyon which is breathtaking. I'll never forget the moment coming over the ridge to view Crater Lake. Unbelievable. No words for most of those sights.

These parks mean the world to me and I'm so please Ken Burns' took this project as no one does it better!

How come YOSEMITE is not on the list of favorites at the top of this post? You can't just pick one but it is in my top 2 for sure.

Also, we should put people to work in a new version of the Civilian Conservation Corps. It could save us from the economy at this time for sure! Worked then and it could work again! Though all we would hear is the gop scrreeeeching about "socialism"..... because they really do NOT get the true value of the National Parks, nor the true value of government's role in saving this country from the corporations. CCC 2009 could do that.

EXCELLENT WORK MR. BURNS!!!

[Khirad]

Not on the list, 'cause these are Rocky Mountain ones. I will agree though, I was just at Crater Lake. Spent most of my life in the Northwest and never went to it until taking an alternate route back up north.

[acrossthewalls]

Uh, why is this written as things near Colorado? What's the point? Some of these parks aren't even in CO, let alone the Rockies, so why use that range as a defining factor for the parks included? There's more to the inter-mountain West than Colorado, you know. Also, I'm guessing that's supposed to read "send us YOUR National Park photos," not "send us YOU National Park photos."?

[NHBill]

The only thing that approaches Acadia National Park is Pepperland!
It's so gorgeous that you will think on fairies and elves can live there.

[bluevistas]

Mt Rainier is my favorite.

[Khirad]

Magical place.

[ute]

Capitol Reef N.P. is one of the best kept secrets in the whole system, IMHO.

[derrickhoyle]

Agreed.