Visiting the National Parks, National Monuments, Wilderness areas and State Parks in the Untied States can be an adventure. I’ve been visiting, climbing, hiking and taking photographs in these parks for years. Certainly, I could say that almost every park is unique. I am an outdoors type of person and enjoy the fresh air, sunshine and incredible views. These parks are wonderful for people who enjoy these types of activities:



•Hiking

•Camping

•Cycling

•ATV

•Scenic Drives

•Horseback Riding

•Wildlife

•Rafting

•Fishing

•Hunting

•Canyoneering

•Photography

•Water sports and boating

•Caves and exploring

After all these years of traveling and exploring the hardest part always seems to be the research time. I’ll visit website after website finding the parks or areas of interest that I want to explore, then onto researching where I’m going to stay. Then to the task of mapping out the travel time details to make the trek comfortable as I go from the first location to the next activity, to the accommodations and so on. To solve this inefficiency a group of us outdoor enthusiasts have been creating a website with all the National Parks, National Monuments, State Parks and Wilderness Areas all located in one forum message board for adventure travelers to read, share and post their trip reports. We bought the web domain name adventurezonetours and have been busy loading basic data for each location. Now it’s all in one place.

So, which park do you think is the most unique? I have always just loved Glacier National Park in Montana and have been drawn back for visit after visit. But, in the last couple of years I seem to be changing my mind. I’ve been turned onto Zion National Park in Utah and the slot canyons of the southwest. Zion Canyon is just awesome. I have also recently taken my first journey into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument also known as GSENM. It was really just a quick trip through the monument on one of the remote wilderness roads that crosses from near Kodachrome State Park to Southern Utah, near the Arizona border. It may turn out to be the most unique. What do you think?

All those hours of loading data in the adventurezonetours message boards gave me a chance to see parks, monuments and wilderness areas in the USA, and some areas I have not visited. One park stood out as a bit unique to me. It is in Michigan and I have not visited it. I doubt that you have visited it either! The park is a state park called Meridian - Baseline State Park. It is not open to the public, so how could we have visited it? Here’s the link for information about this park. Check it out!

http://www.adventurezonetours.com/index.php?showtopic=2032

So, I guess since this park is not open to the public, it has struck me as very unique. Would you agree?

The Meridan – Baseline State Park is 88 acres and preserves a marker that was used for the Michigan Survey. In general here is what the marker preserves.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, there were only thirteen states. The territory of land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River were in question. The new Continental Congress was asking these states to give up any claims of ownership of these lands to the federal government. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all claimed large chunks of this land. A large chunk of Michigan had been chartered to Virginia from King James in 1609, at the time this was the Northwest Territory. In 1787 a territory was established by congress in what is now Michigan. After a new territory grew to a population of 60,000 free citizens, it could petition Congress to become a state. This new state could then have all the rights of the original 13 states. At that time a survey would happen and thus, in 1815 two men were hired to establish accurately the location of the base line and the principal meridian which are preserved by this marker.