Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 45 to 54.When most people hear the term “National Park”, they automatically think of namessuch as “Yellowstone”, or “Yosemite”, or “Grand Canyon”. The big parks’ names bring to mind vast stretches of undisturbed wilderness perfect for hiking, camping, and naturewatching. But while this vision of America’s National Parks is wholly accurate and ...

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 45 to 54.

When most people hear the term “National Park”, they automatically think of namessuch as “Yellowstone”, or “Yosemite”, or “Grand Canyon”. The big parks’ names bring to mind vast stretches of undisturbed wilderness perfect for hiking, camping, and naturewatching. But while this vision of America’s National Parks is wholly accurate and sufficientlybreathtaking, there’s more.

America’s National Park system has an incredible 388 places to visit. This number includes not only the big parks, but also monuments, historical sites, recreation areas, battlefields, as well as scenic lakeshores, seashores, and rivers. And the Parks themselves don’t just stop at geyser-fields and mule-excursions. In America’s National Parks, you can climb an active volcano in Hawaii, “spelunk” the vast underground world of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, dive the exotic coral reef of Biscayne Bay in Florida, or cast your fishing nets in the far reaches of the Pacific with the locals of American Samoa. Each of these 388 places has a unique appeal- from the natural to the manmade, from the ethereal to the factual, from the subtle to the overwhelming – with the whole collection offering vacationers a nearly endless range of interests and activities in which to explore and indulge.

SeeAmerica.org is a great place to begin planning your trip to one of, or several of, America’s National Parks. From the homepage, you can search all of the parks by name, region, activity, or even zip code. The site also serves as a portal to other important sites, like the National Park Service’s official website, www.nps.gov, and the National Park Foundation’s, www.nationalparks.org. From SeeAmerica.org, you can get to all theinformation you’ll need to plan your trip from start to finish – from directions to the park, to park fees, to typical weather conditions.

What information can you find at www.nationalparks.org?