Zion National Park

This camera looks over Zion National Park in southwestern Utah, a landscape of towering sandstone cliffs, narrow slot canyons, and the Virgin River that carved them. Zion Canyon's walls rise up to 2,000 feet of cross-bedded Navagjo sandstone in bands of cream, pink, and deep red. The view captures the monumental scale and the way the light shifts across the rock through the day — the formations practically glow at sunrise and sunset. Zion is a year-round park with a desert climate, but each season has its character: spring runoff swells the river and waterfalls; summer is hot, with monsoon storms that can trigger flash floods in the narrows; autumn brings cottonwood gold along the river; winter dusts the red rock with snow for a striking contrast. Utah is on Mountain Time, three hours behind Hawaii. The park is famous for some of the most thrilling hikes in the national park system — Angels Landing, a knife-edge ridge climbed with chains to a 1,500-foot-high perch, and The Narrows, where hikers wade up the river between soaring canyon walls. A shuttle serves Zion Canyon for most of the year. California condors, bighorn sheep, and mule deer all range the park.