Google launched a virtual tour in 2016 to commemorate the centennial of the National Park Service featuring five of the nation’s parks: The Hidden World of National Parks. The site features 360 degree video, audio and YouTube packages to fully immerse viewers. Led by actual park rangers, the tours dive into places sometimes rarely seen by tourists, offering more insight — including personal connections — to the places themselves.

While the virtual tours aren’t the same as visiting the parks and experiencing it in person, it is a good substitute and great to spark the urge to make plans to visit in the future.

Kenai Fjords, Alaska

Home to nearly 40 glaciers that stem from the Harding Icefield at the edge of Kenai Peninsula, the virtual tour is lead by park ranger Fiona North and focuses on the glaciers that cut through the earth and formed the fjords for which the park is named.

North takes virtual tourists onto the ice of Exit Glacier, the most visited and most easily accessible glacier in the park. Here, the effects of climate change can be viewed fully. In 2016, the glacier’s annual recession measured about 150 feet per year on average, but by the end of that summer it was determined the glacier lost 252 feet during the five-month summer season alone.

The park only allows visitors within a certain distance of the toe of the glacier for safety concerns, but the virtual tour allows viewers out on the ice and a chance to join North in one of its crevasses. The 360 degree photo allows viewers to see the bright blue ice peeking out.

With the click of a mouse, you then travel 12.8 miles as the crow flies (and much further than it would take in person as there are no roads) to the terminus or toe of Bear Glacier, and its brilliant turquoise waters of the meltwater lagoon there.

Here, North leads us on a short kayak ride through the icebergs, explaining the dangers of these floating islands as well as a bit of the human history of the Native people who invented kayaks to traverse through icy waters like these.

Here you can watch a humpback whale breach and a glacier calve, break off and crash into the water, or listen (with headphones for the best experience) to the ice crack and creak from under the lagoon all from the comfort and safety of your couch.

Finally, fly over Bear Glacier for breathtaking scenery of the sprawling ice field as it meets the water.

Hawai’i Volcanoes, Hawaii

Led by ranger and native Hawaiian Andrea Kaawaloa-Okita, whose family has worked for the parks service for four decades, we are taken down into the underbelly of the world’s most active volcano through the Nahuku lava tube at the park.

Next, we go to where the lava met the sea. Over the past 30 years, more than 500 acres of rugged lava land has been added to the island, creating habitat to the noile birds who inhabit crevices of coastal cliffs, which didn’t exist here before the lava came through.

Here you can explore a 360 degree view of the cliffs and listen in to the water crashing and birds whooshing by. Depending on which direction you face, the sound changes much like it would if you were really standing there.

Kaawaloa-Okita takes viewers then to dawn at the Kilauea caldera and visitor center located about a mile from the Iki crater on the mountain where you can choose to listen to the low growl of the magma as it courses underneath the earth or hop on a helicopter and fly over the active Pu’u ‘O’o vent on the eastern flank of Kilauea (the 360 degree video was captured before the vent stopped erupting in 2018). Likewise, a video of flight over the park offers a great insight into the changing landscapes and how nature finds a way to recover after the lava has cooled.

Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

The massie cave lies 750 feet below the surface of the earth. Here we can splunk into the famous cave with the help of park ranger Pam Cox.

First, we learn a bit about the inhabitants of the cave: the Brazilian free-tailed bat.

Fly around with the ranger to learn about echolocation with an animated interactive experience about these important creatures. In fact, it’s because of the bats that the cavern was first found by a westerner.

About 120 years ago, a Texas ranch hand “discovered” the cave after investigating the large swarm of bats that flew out of the ground. In truth, there is evidence of the cave being used by prehistoric humans so it has been well known for centuries.

Down in the cave virtual tourists can look around the Big Room, the largest single chamber cavern in North America. Here we can choose to learn more about discoveries continuing to be made, like the Spirit World room discovered just 30 years ago. Or join Cox as she descends further into the lower cave where tourists do not normally venture, and explore using the 360 degree video feature.

Bryce Canyon, Utah

The red rocks and hoodoos that make this park a wonder are yours to explore including the sky above them. Sixteen-year park ranger at Bryce Canyon, Kevin Poe begins the tour by taking a look at the cosmos and one of the darkest skies in the country.

Many Americans can’t view the stars from their own backyards due to light pollution, but here the Milky Way shines brightly above. An interactive map of the sky highlights five night sky features seen here: the Andromeda Galaxy (our closest galactic neighbor), the constellations Hercules and Ursa Major (home of the Big Dipper), Mars and Antares (a star cluster that appears red to the naked eye and is often mistaken for the Red Planet), and the Needle Galaxy, the largest and most distant object you’ll ever see according to Poe.

Coming back to earth, we are left at an overlook of the gorgeous hoodoos that make up the park at point on the Navajo Loop trail. Here we can choose to listen to the sounds of Bryce Canyon in the early morning, complete with squawking and melodic bird songs, coyote yips, bees buzzing and the wind blowing gently through the canyon.

Or take a horseback ride with the park ranger guide down the Peekaboo Loop trail, one of the most strenuous hikes in the park.

There is also the chance to learn more about how these hoodoos form and about two Douglas fir trees that found a home in a slot canyon that is prone to washouts.

Dry Tortugas, Florida

The Civil War-era Fort Jefferson is located at the southernmost tip of the contiguous United States and home to the National Park that is 99% underwater.

Led by park ranger and diver Curtis Hall, we’re taken beneath the azure waters to explore, in 360 degree video, the reef up close and learn a little about the vibrant yet sensitive ecology here. Some of the coral at Dry Tortugas Loggerhead Key are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old.

We can also dive through the bones of the Avanti shipwreck, sometimes called the Windjammer.

When the ship ran aground in 1907, the crew survived, but the ship was left to the elements. Now what’s left of the hull is home to plants and corals that have reclaimed it.

On dry ground, viewers can explore the fort.

The fort is the largest masonry fort in the country, mostly built by slave labor between 1846 and 1875. It was also one the first places to house an all African American regiment.

The island can only be reached by boat or seaplane, making this virtual tour the easiest way to check out what the park is all about.