NEW YORK (June 12, 2001 ) - Flowers don't only bloom in springtime. In fact, in the high country of such places as New York's Adirondack Park or Denali National Park in Alaska, wildflowers reach their peak in June, July and August. For outdoor adventurers seeking some visual stimulation on their hikes and bike rides over the upcoming months, outdoor recreation and adventure travel Web site GORP.com has identified ten parks across the country where enthusiasts can absorb spectacular and colorful displays of nature's wildflowers.

Located at http://www.gorp.com/gorp/activity/hiking/features/topten_summerbloom.htm, GORP's Top Ten Parks for High-Country Wildflowers are:

1. Adirondack Park, New York - Encounter lavender-colored alpine marsh violets and white alpine bistorts, saxifrage, bluebells, mountain sandworts, and the rarest of the rare here in the East - the dwarf cinquefoil, a five-petaled yellow blossom.

2. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina/Tennessee - Known to botanists as "Wildflower National Park," the Smokies offer up lush greenery and immense rhododendron thickets, with brilliantly purple Catawbas and delicately light pink rosebays.

3. Big Bend National Park, Texas - In the midst of desert vastness, find yellow columbines in rocky canyons, maidenhair ferns thriving in lush banks at springs, and goldeneyes, creosote bushes, pink and purple blooms of ceniza, sage, scarlet bouvardia, and ocotillos.

4. Badlands National Park, South Dakota - Enjoy some 200 species of wildflowers, such as Missouri milk vetch, and hood phlox, penstemons, and purple coneflowers, which are distributed throughout the waist-high grasslands of the largest, protected mixed-grass prairie in the U.S.

5. Glacier National Park, Montana - Experience grand displays of lupines, glacier lilies, sticky geraniums, monkeyflowers, and hundreds of other species along Logan's Pass, the most accessible gateway to the park's spectacular alpine meadows.

6. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado - In middle elevations, find arnicas, sego lilies, blue columbines and meadow rues in the pine and aspen forests, while the meadows will be full of scarlet paintbrushes, blue penstemons, orange sneezeweeds, and purple-fringed gentians.

7. Zion National Park, Utah - The real surprises are hidden in the cool, shadowed recesses of the park's canyons - such as Zion's Weeping Rock, with its vibrant hanging gardens and luxurious growths of moss, maidenhair ferns, watercress, blue columbine orchids, sedges, and scarlet monkeyflowers.

8. Yosemite National Park, California - Look for corn lilies ringing Sierran lakes and cinquefoils, sky pilots, senecios, and buttercups splashing the rocky slopes and meadows of the High Sierra.

9. Mount Rainier National Park, Washington - Enjoy expanses of blue lupines interspersed with spectacular displays of red Indian paintbrushes, heather, arnicas, larkspurs, bluebells, wild sunflowers, columbines, alpine dandelions, and Jacob's ladder, just to name a few.

10. Denali National Park in Alaska - Highlighting the Alaskan interior are goldenrods, deep blue wild larkspurs, and yellow, daisy-like arnicas; hot-pink fireweeds along the roadsides; and Alaska's state flower, the tiny blue forget-me-not.

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