National Parks Traveler

There's still time to get your creative juices flowing to enter the Acadia National Park Centennial Celebration Logo Contest, which carries a $3,000 prize for the winner.

Here at the Traveler we recently asked you to comment on Which Is The Most Overlooked, Or Under Appreciated, Unit Of The National Park System? Well, after my trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, I can answer with great conviction that the three intriguing parks in St. Croix -- Christiansted National Historic Site, Buck Island Reef National Monument, and Salt River Bay National Historical Park -- qualify for both overlooked and under-appreciated.

Congressional efforts to dictate paddling rules in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, a poster contest at Cedar Breaks National Monument, and cleaner air for Grand Canyon National Park are just some of the topics swirling about the National Park System.

John Lowry Dobson (1915-2014) amateur telescope maker, co-founder of the Sidewalk Astronomers, and an evangelist for interpreting the "other half" of our national parks, dies at age 98

Dude, if you value your National Park Service job, don't toke up, not even in Washington state or Colorado, where the adults 21 and older can light up legally.

Paddling down a river or across a lake in a national park setting is truly a wonderful, memorable experience, one that carries thrills and life-long memories. You can retrace the historic 19th-century journey of John Wesley Powell, or land on a lodgepole pine-studded shore where camp is set under swaying trees and the evening brings a vivid sunset.

Grand Canyon National Park has some of the steepest trails, trails that switchback slowly down a mile into the depths of the canyon. Maintaining those trails is not an insigificant matter, and thanks to the Grand Canyon Association a trails endowment fund has been launched with a $1 million deposit.

A 28-year-old Utah woman fell an estimated 2,000 feet to her death when her parachute failed to open properly after she jumped off Mount Kinesava at Zion National Park.

"Monuments Men," the just-released movie starring George Clooney, Matt Damon and Bill Murray as World War II military historians tasked with saving artworks and cultural treasures from the throes of war, has some National Park Service threads woven into it.

In the shifting sands of White Sands National Monument, traces of the prehistoric past are slowly being erased. Though they might soon be gone, these markers left behind by mammoths and camel-like animals have been preserved through remote imaging technology.