America’s Park Service protects our natural wonders

America’s National Park Service is celebrating its centennial this year.

Established in 1916, the service officially turns 100 on Aug. 25. The birthday celebration itself, which runs Aug. 25-28, will commemorate the achievements of the past 100 years and will kick off a second century of stewardship for America’s spectacular system of national parks.

The U.S. has 411 park areas covering 84 million acres.

Since retiring in 2008, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting many of them. My wife, Hedy, and I have made stops in recent years at several dozen, and have fallen in love with each one: from Great Smokey Mountain National Park to Glacier to Yellowstone.

Last week we traveled a popular loop through Arizona and Utah to ooh-and-ah at three of the more spectacular parks in the system: the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks in Utah.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the 1916 act creating the National Park Service. But, it was President Ulysses S. Grant who actually brought the nation’s first national park into existence: Yellowstone in 1872.

My introduction to the National Park System came in 1955 as a sixth-grader. My parents, my brother and sister and I, hauled a trailer from Costa Mesa to Yosemite. Later, as an adult, Hedy and I visited the park several times with our three daughters. We went on hikes that frequently featured Hedy and me hoisting a fatigued daughter onto our shoulders.

With our girls, we also visited Sequoia and Redwood national parks in California, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island, and Olympic National Park in Washington state.

Hedy and I began last week’s remarkable excursion with an invigorating two-night stay at the Maswik Lodge — at an elevation of 7,000 feet on the uplifted Colorado Plateau — a quarter-mile from the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. The canyon, more than 277 miles long, an average of 10 miles wide, and a mile deep, provides visitors a multitude of inspirational vistas.

The light in the canyon changes by the moment, meaning an individual’s perspective from any given point on the canyon’s rim will be dramatically altered throughout the day.

The canyon’s visitor center is one of the best in the National Park System.

During our journey from the Grand Canyon to Lake Powell — a reservoir straddling the Arizona-Utah border — we visited the Navajo Tribal Park, Monument Valley. A connoisseur of Hollywood Westerns, I had long anticipated the visit.

We took a Jeep ride through backcountry roads to view the spectacular buttes and mesas that have been featured in a host of classic Hollywood films, including “Stagecoach,” “The Searchers” and “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

I even got to snoop around John Wayne’s cabin.

That night we watched “The Searchers” — for the umpteenth time — in our hotel room. Vera Miles was beautiful; Ward Bond ill tempered; and Wayne, well, he was the Duke.

We spent a couple of nights at spectacular Lake Powell and toured the magnificent Glen Canyon Dam. The dam manages Colorado River water before it enters the Grand Canyon. California residents use almost half the water released by the dam.

The second largest man-made lake in the U.S., Powell was named for Civil War veteran and scientific explorer John Wesley Powell. Powell led the first Anglo expedition on the river, running his wooden boats from Green River in Wyoming through the Grand Canyon.

Hedy and I visited Bryce Canyon and saw the “Hoodoos” — tall red, orange and pink spires of limestone rock. The natural Bryce Amphitheatre was breathtaking.

We then spent two nights at the spectacular Zion Lodge — the only lodging to be found inside the confines of the park. The lodge is situated in a box canyon surrounded by stunning 2,000-foot-tall black, red, pink and white canyon walls and rock monoliths. It’s a sight to behold.

If you can’t make the 100th birthday party this year, consider a visit to a U.S. National Park next year.

The Park System is perhaps America’s greatest wonder.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.