Browse Through the Traveler Content

Now is the time to be planning your summer or fall vacations to the national parks.

A coalition announced plans today to sue federal agencies, including the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency, for failing to protect airsheds over national parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges.

A National Park Foundation grant will enable a ranger at Blue Ridge Parkway to collect oral histories from a number of workers who helped build the parkway in the 1930s and 1940s.

A review of how Congress acted on wilderness legislation shows that the National Park System benefited quite nicely during the 111th session, but it could have fared better.

Hiking trails are one of the best ways to enjoy national parks. They lead you out into nature, get you some exercise, and quite often showcase some gorgeous vistas. Here's a look back at some of the great trails we've mentioned on the Traveler during the past 12 months.

For some, hiking can be addicting. For Jennifer Pharr Davis, it became both an avocation and her vocation.

'Tis is the season for counting birds as the 111th annual Christmas Bird Count rolls out across the country, and more than a few national parks are welcoming you to count birds.

We'd like to welcome Friends of the Smokies to the Traveler's list of sponsors and invite you to check out this organization that makes so many possibilities turn into realities at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The 11-mile-long Loop Road through Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is scheduled to be closed Wednesday and part of Thursday for bug spraying operations, according to park officials.

It seems not a week goes by without some dire issue being identified as a threat to the national parks. One week it might be funding woes, another week pollution, another diversity concerns, and then, of course, there's climate change.

It looks somewhat like a dusting of confectioner's sugar, but the white coating that is showing up on more and more noses and wings of bats is the signature of a dire fungal disease that threatens to decimate bat colonies across the country.

The cost of camping at Cataloochee in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is going up next year, but you'll also be able to reserve a spot, rather than risk being the odd one out under the previous first-come, first-served approach.

During my recent hike in Shenandoah National Park along the Appalachian Trail, I came upon a tight crook in the trail that carried Ivy Creek downhill amid a flurry of gold, red, orange and yellow leaves of fall. There can be no more spectacular setting that the hardwood forests of the East. Unless it's set ablaze by the pastel daubs of spring wildflowers in places such as Glacier, Saquaro or Canyonlands national parks.

Sarah "Gee" Phillips is not Mrs. Sarah Davis; she just plays her on the Mountain Farm Museum in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Right now, Gee rocks on the porch of the Davis House while working on a quilt pattern. "Mrs. Davis wouldn't be quilting on a Monday. She would probably be scrubbing her laundry on a washboard," she explains to visitors.