#2 Yosemite National Park

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Location: California

Ranking Score: 86.9

“The Yosemite Valley is iconic, but draws 95 percent of the park's visitors to a slender valley a mile wide and seven miles long. A day spent there is enough; then head up onto the Tioga Road and experience many of the fine trails that dart off from it and take you past granite domes, refreshing alpine lakes and streams, and into forests of pine.”

—Kurt Repanshek

“Hanging on a portaledge (a hanging tent that climbers bolt to cliff walls) for the night, I appreciated that nowhere else in the world are there so many big and sheer rock walls providing exceptional rock-climbing, which are so accessible, and situated in a valley as beautiful as the one which spread out two thousand feet below. Yet the valley is only 5% of Yosemite, and the rest of the backcountry is also full of gems.”

— QT Luong

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