SPECIAL FAMILY VACATIONS : FAMILY FAVORITES : NATIONAL PARKS : ONE FAMILY’S PICKS FOR THE BEST OF THE WEST

Admire a moose or a real dinosaur skeleton. Hike through a rain forest. Explore a cave sparkling with stalactites and stalagmites, or grab a sled and whoosh down a giant sand dune.

My family and I have enjoyed all those adventures at our favorite national parks and monuments across the West. We visited 52 National Park Service sites over the past year and a half as part of my research for a series of regional family guidebooks--and the trips provided some of our best vacation memories.

If you’re planning a summer vacation to a national park, be prepared for lots of company. Officials are predicting a busy summer, with inquiries up substantially from last year at many parks.

At such perennial draws as Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, in-park accommodations and special activities are typically sold out several months in advance (though cancellations are possible, and you can usually find a place to stay in a nearby gateway community).

If campgrounds within the park don’t take reservations (and many don’t, including those in Glacier and Olympic parks), it’s important to arrive at a gateway community the night before your visit and be at your chosen campground before noon during the summer months.

The major parks are so huge--hundreds of thousands of acres--that it’s easy to spend all day trying to get from one crowded site to another. A better strategy is to concentrate on one area. Once you get away from the busiest areas, you’ll find the solitude you came to find.

The following parks represent six of my top family picks, chosen for their diversity of geography and wildlife as well as their appeal to children:

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Glacier National Park, just south of the Canadian border in northwestern Montana, is my hands-down favorite because of its wonderful scenery--fields full of wildflowers, snow-capped mountains, glaciers and clear lakes--and the chance to see lots of wildlife, especially bighorn sheep and mountain goats.

Best family adventure: Stand up to your neck in Lake McDonald, located near the west entrance of the park. The water in Glacier’s most popular lake is nippy, even in July, but you can see clear to your toes.

Best family entertainment: The evening musical revue performed by the college-age staff at Many Glacier Hotel. The production we saw in the basement cabaret was full of rousing song-and-dance numbers, from “It’s a Grand Old Flag” to “Aquarius.” Our kids liked it so much we saw it twice.

Best souvenir: Huckleberry jam, because huckleberries (which taste like a tart cross between blueberries and raspberries) grow wild in the region.

Beating the crowds: Since park restaurants are few and far between, pack a lunch wherever you go. You can buy picnic fixings at small general stores within the park or just outside park boundaries at West Glacier, East Glacier and St. Mary.

Lodging tip: We loved the grand old Many Glacier Hotel, which looks like an enormous Swiss chalet and is set on Swiftcurrent Lake on the northeast side of the park. Closed from mid-September to mid-June, it requires reservations several months to a year ahead of your visit. (Information and reservations: 602-207-6000.)

Don’t miss: Fields of wildflowers that bloom from early spring through late summer. You’ll find them along most hiking trails. Our favorite was the tall white beargrass that resembles a giant Q-Tip: a long blade of grass with a stalk of white flowers at the top.

Best advice: Remember that the famed Going-to-the-Sun Road, a narrow, winding drive that takes visitors from the park’s lowest elevations across the top of the Continental Divide, will be closed for roadwork Sunday through Thursday nights between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. from July 5 to the first snowfall. (Logan Pass Visitors Center at the Continental Divide will close Aug. 15 this year only.)

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The 900,000 acres that make up Washington’s Olympic National Park, on the Olympic Peninsula west of Seattle, are home to the country’s largest herd of elk and some of its most diverse terrain: glaciers, jagged mountains, wind-swept beaches and a rare temperate rain forest. We visited for a few summer days and left reluctantly, knowing there was much more to discover.

Best family adventure: Exploring the tide pools at Kalaloch Beach along the southern end of the park. Rangers lead tide-pool walks to help you better identify the orange and red sea stars, green anemones, yellow sea cucumbers and purple urchins. Watch for seals, sea otters and maybe even a migrating gray whale . . . but be careful of sudden high waves.

Best family entertainment: Soaking in the mineral water pools at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort. One pool is designed for swimming--”a gigantic bathtub,” my daughter Reggie pronounced--while the other two are for soaking. They’re all wonderfully relaxing.

Best souvenir: A basket, carving or weaving from one of the 11 Native American tribes that live throughout the Olympic Peninsula.

Beating the crowds: Visit in June or September rather than July or August, the busiest months. If midsummer is your only option, come early in the day and avoid weekends (when tourists from Seattle descend in droves).

Lodging tip: We stayed in nearby Port Angeles, which offers a variety of motel accommodations. (Call the Port Angeles Visitors Information Center at 206-452-2363.) The park offers wonderful accommodations, however, you need to book at least three months in advance. We particularly liked the 32-unit Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort (telephone 206-327-3583).

Don’t miss: The Sitka spruce trees in the Hoh Rain Forest. They look like they’re on stilts and grow in rows called colonnades--almost as if they’re standing at attention at a parade ground.

Best advice: Olympic contains an abundant population of cougars, and sightings have increased recently. If you encounter one, face the animal, talking loudly. Don’t turn and run.

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If your children like dinosaurs, they’ll love the 211,000-acre Dinosaur National Monument, about 400 miles from Salt Lake City. It’s a bona fide Jurassic park that straddles the northern Utah and Colorado borders.

What makes the place so special is that there are about 1,500 fossil bones of more than 10 dinosaur species, exposed as they were buried in the river 150 million years ago. You can see the jumbled bones of what had been a 70-foot Apatosaurus (the correct name for a Brontosaurus) and the remains of a five-foot baby Stegosaurus. The Dinosaur Quarry building was built over them. New finds continue to be made throughout the park.

Besides the quarry, there are miles of spectacular canyons with cragged red, gray, purple and brown rock formations and plenty of scenic overlooks.

Best family adventure: Admiring the 1,000-year-old petroglyphs carved along Cub Creek. Look for those drawings of lizards and a flute player. Even the kids will be impressed that the artwork has lasted so long.

Best family entertainment: Much of Dinosaur National Monument is a desert, and the most enjoyable way to experience it is to take a raft trip down the Green or Yampa rivers. White-water trips range from several hours to several days. (Call the Dinosaurland Travel Board at 800-477-5558 for the names of outfitters and local lodgings.)

Best souvenir: “Dinosaur,” a book produced by the Dinosaur Nature Assn. and members of the staff of Dinosaur National Monument ($5.95 at the park visitors center).

Beating the crowds: Even on the busiest midsummer days, no more than about 4,000 people visit the monument--which ensures plenty of elbow room, though the visitors center becomes very crowded.

Lodging tip: There are no hotels at the monument. Stay about 13 miles west in Vernal, Utah, or within the park at the Green River campground along the river.

Don’t miss: The huge block of rock that holds the skeleton of a young, 12-foot-long meat-eating dinosaur of a still-unnamed species. It was discovered three years ago on a nearly vertical wall of rock at the head of a narrow canyon. About 300 tons of rock were blasted from around the skeleton. Then the 6,700-pound block was moved by helicopter one-half mile to the paleontology lab at the Quarry Visitors Center.

Best advice: Take time to peer into the windows of the lab at the quarry. If you’re lucky, you’ll see paleontologists hard at work (though during the summer, they are usually in the field). The interpretive programs take on special meaning with real dinosaur bones right in front of you.

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There’s more hissing and bubbling at Yellowstone National Park--which includes about 10,000 thermal features and 200 active geysers--than anywhere else in the world. It’s worth weathering the inevitable crowds to experience them at America’s oldest national park, which is located mainly in northwest Wyoming, extending also into Montana and Idaho.

Best family pleasure: A 7 a.m. stroll around the Upper Geyser Basin. We saw very few other early birds as we walked the 1.4 miles around the biggest concentration of geysers in the park: Giantess Geyser, Plume, Castle Geyser, among others. Wherever we turned, it seemed, a geyser was spewing or bubbling.

Best family entertainment: A western cookout in the Tower-Roosevelt area of the park. Go on horses or by horse-drawn wagon for a steak dinner and all the trimmings at long communal tables, complete with cowboy stories and songs. (Call 307-344-7311.)

Best souvenir: A Yellowstone T-shirt with a bear on it. Among the wildlife you’re guaranteed to spot are elk, moose and mule deer.

Beating the crowds: Travel through the park in the early morning and late evening. You’ll see more animals and fewer people. Old Faithful goes off roughly every 70 minutes. Get there half an hour before the eruption so you can get a seat in front and watch it build.

Lodging tip: All but three of the park’s 10 campgrounds are first-come, first-served. If you’re lucky enough to get into Old Faithful Lodge--people reserve several months ahead--request a room in the recently renovated wing.

Don’t miss: The half-mile Fountain Paint Pot Nature Trail to see bubbling mud pots. Walk on boardwalks around the gurgling, steaming patches of hot mud. It seems as if a witch must be making her brew underground. That’s what the kids will insist, anyway.

Best advice: Plan at least a three-day visit. First-time visitors should concentrate on the area around the Upper Geyser Basin near Old Faithful.

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It’s hard to imagine more sand--mile after mile, with dunes up to 60 feet high--than what you’ll find at White Sands National Monument, about 15 miles southwest of Alamogordo, N.M., at the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert. The sugarlike sand dunes are formed from a mineral called gypsum, which is common in the nearby mountains.

Best family pleasure: Driving the 16-mile Dunes Drive and pulling off the road to watch the sun set in the dunes. It feels as if you’re in another world.

Best family entertainment: Bring along a round plastic sled (available in the visitors center gift shop for about $7), wax the bottom and let ‘er rip!

Best souvenir: The sled.

Beating the crowds: White Sands never seems too crowded. It’s the kind of place where kids make friends immediately and take off sledding down the dunes while parents sit and contemplate the sheer beauty of the place.

Don’t miss: The Big Dune Nature Trail, where you may spot kangaroo rat and road-runner tracks or a few darkling beetles (also called stinkbugs). They’re a favorite of kids for their habit of pointing their rumps into the air.

Lodging tip: There are no campgrounds in the park, but three public campgrounds are within 35 miles. We stayed in a motel in Alamogordo, where you can tour the first-rate Alamogordo Space Center. (Call the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce, tel. 505-437-6120.)

Best advice: Area roads, as well as the monument itself, shut down for up to two hours when testing takes place at neighboring White Sands Missile Range. To avoid potential delays, check with the park the day before your visit.

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Carlsbad Caverns National Park, its rangers joke, is “not on the way to anywhere.” The 47,000-acre desert and mountain wilderness is 175 miles east of El Paso, Tex., and 27 miles west of the town of Carlsbad, N.M.

It’s home to 80 caves (of which only three are open to the public) and rock formations with such aptly descriptive names as Witches Finger and Lions Tail. But for many visitors, the park’s star attractions are the hordes of bats that swoop out of Carlsbad Cavern each summer evening in search of insects.

Best family adventure: None were scheduled the day we visited, but rangers tell me kids love the lantern-lighted tours to undeveloped areas of massive Carlsbad Cavern and to the much-smaller Slaughter Canyon Cave, 23 miles away. As of 1994, adventurers 12 and older can take a guided, “stooping/crawling” tour through undeveloped Spider Cave, about half a mile from the park visitors center. The park supplies helmets and headlamps; would-be explorers bring gloves and kneepads.

Best family entertainment: Watching the bats, in search of their dinner, fly out of Carlsbad Cavern en masse, forming a thick black cloud. They can eat 900 insects an hour. You’ll hear their wings beating, but no screeching--not even from the kids watching. “This is a very dignified nature show,” one ranger said with a laugh.

Best souvenir: An Adopt-a-Bat photo and certificate, available at the visitors center for $5.

Beating the crowds: Avoid holiday weekends. Best month to visit is September, when the bats are still in residence but visitors are relatively few.

Lodging tip: The closest camping and motels are in Whites City, seven miles east of the visitors center, though more choices are available in Carlsbad. (Call the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce, tel. 505-887-6516.)

Don’t miss: The Bottomless Pit, a black-bottomed hole that goes down 140 feet in Carlsbad Cavern’s Big Room (parts of which are large enough to contain a 35-story building).

Best advice: Bring jackets and wear sturdy, non-slip shoes. No strollers allowed.

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GUIDEBOOK: Parking It

For general information, contact the Office of Public Inquiries, National Park Service, Box 37127, Room 1013, Washington, DC 20013; telephone (202) 208-4747.

If you’ll be visiting more than one park, consider a Golden Eagle Passport for $25. It allows visits to parks, monuments, historic sites and wildlife refuges for a year. (If Grandma and Grandpa go along, it’s even cheaper: At 62, they qualify for a $10 Golden Age Passport admitting them and a carful of relatives or friends to any park.)

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, 3225 National Parks Highway, Carlsbad, NM 88220; tel. (505) 785-2232.

Dinosaur National Monument, 4545 U.S. 40, P.O. Box 210, Dinosaur, CO 81610; tel. (970) 374-3000.

Glacier National Park, Glacier Park Headquarters, West Glacier, MT 59936; tel. (406) 888-5441.

Olympic National Park, Chief Naturalist, 600 E. Park Ave., Port Angeles, WA 98362; tel. (206) 452-0330.

White Sands National Monument, P.O. Box 1086, Holloman AFB, NM 88330; tel. (505) 479-6124. Yellowstone National Park, P.O. Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190; tel. (307) 344-7381.