Blue Ridge Parkway

The scenery and attractions of the lofty Blue Ridge Mountain bastion called the High Country are a pinnacle of the Blue Ridge Parkway experience.

There is nothing as traditional as camping out in the national parks for summer vacation. Reserving a campsite on www.recreation.gov can lock in a site long before you hit the road, but sometimes you just don’t get around to doing that. So what to do?

Traveler's 2nd Annual Essential Friends + Gateways publication, a collaboration between the Traveler and a core group of national park foundations, cooperating associations, trusts, friends groups, and gateway communities, is aimed at enhancing and furthering the now nationally significant role of these organizations and entities in the preservation and enjoyment of our parks.

Delaware North Parks & Resorts, which last year landed the contract to run concessions at Shenandoah National Park, has added the Peaks of Otter Lodge on the Blue Ridge Parkway to its operations.

Just in time for National Park Week -- Traveler's 2013 magazine Essential Friends + Gateways! Flip through 50+ pages of full-color features celebrating national parks, their increasingly indispensable friends' groups—along with great park gateways and the local insight and travel tips you need to savor summer in the country's top national parks.

Acadia, Yellowstone, and Yosemite are some of the most adored units of the National Park System, but they don't show up in the top 10 list of most-visited parks during 2012. They're quite a ways from the top 10, actually.

Phil Francis, the National Park Service’s superintendent for the Blue Ridge Parkway since 2005, is retiring on April 1st.

The National Park Service recently released a prospectus soliciting proposals for the operation of Mabry Mill and Rocky Knob Cabins; two concessions on the southern Virginia section of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The approximately 15 million visitors expected this year on the Blue Ridge Parkway—the most visited unit of the national park system—will find fewer ranger-led walks and talks, reduced facilities at campgrounds, picnic areas, and visitor centers, and perhaps a shorter full-service season. Superintendent Phil Francis says the goal is limiting the impact on visitors.

In a reversal of seventy years of “vigorously suppressed” fires on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Superintendent Phil Francis has announced that 150 acres will be burned near Doughton Park “to return the site to a more natural vegetation type” and “increase the quality of wildlife habitat.”

Fewer rangers for search-and-rescue missions, closed campgrounds, and possibly more devastating forest fires are facing the National Park Service as a result of the looming budget fiasco, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said Monday.

History buffs and students working on a class report are among potential users of a website that features cultural landscapes in the National Park System. Not with familiar the term "cultural landscapes"? This site can help fill in the gaps.

After more than 75 years—many of them passed as the most visited unit of the National Park System—the Blue Ridge Parkway has announced the release of its very first Final General Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement.

The Southern Appalachian Handicraft Guild has run the Parkway’s Folk Art Center in Asheville since 1979 and that record continues with the organization gaining another 10-year lease on the property.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to drum up interest in several commercial properties on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the National Park Service has extended the submission date and issued a revised and scaled-down prospectus.

End the year with one last philanthropic gesture and become one of 469 donors needed to “match the mileposts” on the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation.

America’s kids are suffering from “nature deficit disorder” and that includes national parks. As the National Park Service closes its first century, park proponents across the country are trying to get young people engaged in parks and their preservation. It’s a big challenge, but not all of the news is bad. One university town in North Carolina is showing how proximity to national parks invites newbies into involvement.

What are you looking for on your Blue Ridge Parkway visit—camping, a picnic area, a gift shop, a restaurant, waterfalls, great hiking, or ranger programs? Crabtree Falls has it all!

Humans weren't the only ones stocking up for a feast this month. Flying squirrels, which call a number of national parks home, have been busy with their own meals with winter coming.

Sunday drivers take note—your opportunity to soar the entire piece of the Blue Ridge Parkway between Asheville and Boone—across the massive Craggy Mountains past Mount Mitchell—has gone the way of autumn leaves. Road stabilization efforts have closed the high road between Milepost 355.3 and Milepost 359.8.

Sunrise today showed deep, heavy snow in national parks in the Appalachians, flooding along coastal and barrier island parks, and waves towering more than two stories along some lakeshores farther inland.

There is a real possibility three of the four lodging facilities on the Blue Ridge Parkway will close or remain closed following the 2012 season.

Predictions on how colorful the fall foliage will be for any given year is always a bit of a dice roll, but the forecasts for the current season in eastern national parks were generally promising. So...how accurate were those educated guesses? I took a drive on a short section of the Blue Ridge Parkway this week to find ou

These days the "got milk" expression has been far surpassed by, "is there an app for that?" And in the case of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the answer is "yes!"

Another Blue Ridge Parkway road closure this fall and winter points to the aging infrastructure that undermines this scenic road, the most visited unit of the National Park Service.

With autumn in the offing, the question for leaf lookers heading to Eastern national parks is—what’s the foliage forecast for fall 2012? Howard S. Neufeld has some good news for you—but the reasons why aren’t simple.

Two landmark bridges in the North Carolina High Country near Boone celebrate anniversaries this month with major events and activities planned for Tuesday September 11, 2012.