Xploration Awesome Planet

Yosemite National Park: El Capitan; Half-Dome; Mariposa Grove's 500 giant sequoia trees; wildlife that thrives in the park's ecosystems.

The Mohave Desert; Death Valley; Joshua Tree National Park.

They can be hundreds of miles long and thousands of feet deep, and hiding some of the most mysterious creatures on Earth; a look at the world's most spectacular canyons, featuring the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Monterrey Bay.

An estuary in North Carolina; sea life in Curaçao; a NASA satellite monitors precipitation; near Quebec City is a hotel made entirely of ice.

Mount Saint Helens; how mountains are formed and earthquakes caused; oceans and waterways in constant motion; how the planet speeds through the galaxy.

The Canadian Rockies: Lake Louise; a glacier; the woodland caribou; white-bark pine trees; an archaeologist provides artifacts of people living in the area 10,000 years ago.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; satellites; flight in a DC-3 aircraft; an observatory where new stars are discovered; a spacewalk.

Alaska: a brown bear hunting for salmon; Denali National Park; scuba diving in frigid waters; panning for gold.

Petrified National Forest; Crater Lake; a giant forest of kelp off the Southern California coast; glowworms in New Zealand caves.

Grand Canyon; an ancient cave on the island of Curaçao; Lake Michigan; ice ages.

Lionfish near the coral reefs off Curaçao; oysters of the Chesapeake Bay; an oil spill's effects in Alaska; rebuilding the Louisiana wetlands.

Delaware Bay salt marsh; Pamlico Sound; tide pools in Hawaii; the Bore tide in Alaska.

New Hampshire; why leaves turn colors in the fall; Acadia National Park; Napatree Point.

An exploration of the rivers and lakes that serve as a major source of recreation; featuring exciting waterways such as the canals of Chicago, Lake Seneca and more.

Amazing feats of construction by animals; bees make precise honeycomb formations; the intricacies of a spider web; a Pennsylvania beaver builds dams all by itself; bird nests include one with a false entrance.

Scientists measure the health of forests; invasive plants; using sonic-tomography to look inside trees; why the pitch pine tree can withstand occasional wildfires; an urban forest in Los Angeles.