Five Undiscovered California National Parks

Summertime is a busy travel time and it seems everywhere you go it's crowded. Instead of heading to the beach or Yosemite along with everyone else, try heading to one of the many beautiful and crowd-free California National parks.

Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon Less busy than Yellowstone, Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon are two separate National parks managed as one, which means you only have to pay one entrance fee for the both of them.

Sequoia National park truly is an undiscovered California treasure.

In the park you'll find the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world; Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States; the second-largest road-free wilderness area in the United States, and Crescent Meadow, a Sequoia-rimmed meadow called the "gem of the Sierra" by John Muir.

Channel islands National park Each island has its own endemic plants and animals, leading the Channel islands to often be called California's Galapagos. Over 2,000 species of plants and animals can be found within the park, which consists of five of the eight Channel islands along the southern California coast from Point Conception near Santa Barbara to just north of Los Angeles. The park is lightly visited, never crowded and beautiful year-round. Fall is the best time to visit this California National park though, because blue and humpback whales can be seen migrating.

death Valley National park Home to one of the starkest landscapes in California, death Valley is a geological wonder filled with exposed rock and sparse vegetation. With 3.4 million acres, death Valley is the largest National park in the contiguous U.S. The 18-mile drive from Furnace Creek to Badwater is a must, along the drive you'll see fantastic salt formations, colorful views and the lowest place in the western hemisphere.

Mount Shasta According to John Muir the beauty of Mount Shasta turned his blood to wine. located in Northern California, Mount Shasta is the largest volcanic peak in the contiguous U.S., a towering mountain with one of the highest base-to-summit rises in the world.

Snowcapped Mt. Shasta has pristine mountain lakes and rivers, majestic forests, and miles of backcountry to explore plus plenty of skiing, snowboarding, fishing, golfing, mountain biking, rock climbing and hiking.

Joshua Tree National park located in south eastern California, Joshua Tree National park includes two deserts, each with an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation. This California National park gets its name from the unique looking Joshua tree which can be found in the higher, slightly cooler Mojave Desert.

The geologically unique landscape of the area features hills of bare rock, broken up into loose bolder, making the area huge for rock climbing and scrambling enthusiasts. Barker Dam, Keys View, which offers views of the Coachella Valley and Salton sea, bird watching, and hidden Valley (not the salad dressing) are all must-sees of the Joshua Tree National park.

Jillian Scheeler is a spontaneous road-tripper and avid writer working on assignment for http://TravelPost.com - The Premier Source for Unbiased hotel reviews and Ratings. This article can be reprinted freely as long as all links remain active.

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The Good Samaritan Affiliate Marketer

While the number one priority for any affiliate marketer should be making money, there are ways of combining this with being in aid of others, giving you that good, warm and fuzzy feeling.

Charity

The most obvious way of giving something back is by charity. You can either set aside a portion of your revenue to a charity of your choice, thus giving more and more the more successful you get, or you can find an affiliate program, itself giving a part of its proceeds to charity. Combining them both will, of course, double your efforts and make that warm, fuzzy feeling last even longer.

Promoting the right affiliate program

When promoting an affiliate program, you can make sure the companies involved in all aspects of the process (such as manufacturers and transportation) all are conducting their business in an ethical manor, avoiding products manufactured by the use of child labor or other inhuman work environments.

In a similar way, you can try to look at the environmental aspects of the business; even though all physical products sold over the internet will be shipped, thus contributing to global warming, finding affiliate programs selling products manufactured nearby will make the transportation go only one way.

The list of things possible to look closer at grows long, you can easily spend an eternity trying to find the perfect affiliate program to promote. Try to focus on the things you feel are most important, at least you are doing something.

Helpful websites

Another way of being helpful to others is to present them with useful information about serious issues in their lives. Even though most successful websites are helpful to their audience (otherwise they wouldnt be successful, right?), some topics may help people with far more important issues than others.

Making a helpful website about serious issues (such as diseases or similar) isnt something to take lightly, but if you do your job you might end up helping more people than you could imagine.

Of course, there are many less serious issues that still pose as huge problems for people. Look at the huge problem with over weight; this is clearly a way to combine helping people with the possibility of making money using weight loss affiliate programs. If weight loss isnt your niche, there are many many more niches you can try.

Hair loss is, while not a life threatening disease, a big problem for many men. Similarly the recent boom in alternative health has given affiliate marketers a few herbal alternatives to promoting diet pills and traditional health products.

Honesty

No matter how you choose to go about with your website and your affiliate programs, the single most important factor is honesty. If you say you are giving part of the proceeds to charity - make sure you do. If you are giving people weight or hair loss tips make sure you actually help people.

There are far too many websites exploiting peoples weight issues or similar, only trying to make as much money as possible. Do not forget the fact that if people are following your advice, you have a moral obligation to actually give them correct and useful information.

Theo Swan is writing about affiliate marketing and how to combine a successful website with helping others by the use of hair loss and weight loss affiliate programs presented with honesty and integrity.

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