By Maryann Hammers

Explore the wonders of nature without ever leaving home. These digital tours and web cams bring the best of National Parks, Marine Sanctuaries, and preserves to you.

The National Park Foundation offers an array of digital tours and webcams, including a 360-degree video tour of Crater Lake National Park in Oregon or this live ocean webcam that takes you deep beneath the sea at Channel Islands National Park in California. Or take a “virtual dive” in a kelp forest with sea lions in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Experience more virtual dives in National Marine Sanctuaries,including Monterey Bay, the Olympic Coast, the Florida Keys, and more.

While exploring a national park in person, a bear might be the last thing you want to bump into, but these bear webcams will let you get close-up views of mama and baby bears frolicking and fishing for salmon at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks takes you on stunning ranger-guided tours of five national parks: Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska; Hawaii Volcanoes National Park; Carlsbad Canyons in New Mexico; Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah; and Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida, home to a Civil War-era fort. You’ll get close-up and panoramic views of everything from glaciers to volcanoes, caves to canyons, and shipwrecks to coral reefs.

The Nature Conservancy has an “Osprey Cam” offering close-up video footage of a mother bird guarding her three eggs at the South Cape May Meadows Preserve in New Jersey. Watch the osprey. Or, see a live stream view of the osprey nest right now.

Maryann Hammers is a freelance author who regularly contributes to MOAA.