Blue Ridge Parkway

Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary is next year, but the celebration is already getting under way. Two BRP75 Opening Weekend events are taking place today in Asheville, North Carolina, a city that learned on a happy day in November 1934 that it would become a parkway community after all.

A nearly $4 million deal with one of the country's largest railroads has placed almost 1,500 wooded acres, including some that are highly visible from Blue Ridge Parkway overlooks, into a conservation easement that will protect them from ever being logged or developed.

If you're planning to head on down the Blue Ridge Parkway from end-to-end this leaf season, you better read the following regarding road closures and detours.

Fall color season is a busy time on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but busy or not, officials at the Blue Ridge Parkway aren't taking any chances with the risk of a potential landslide on the scenic roadway. An emergency closure of a short section of the parkway near Ashville is in effect.

Fall is a wonderful season to visit the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the park has good news for travelers on the North Carolina portion of the scenic drive. Work on the Goshen Creek Bridge has been completed and the section of the Parkway between mileposts 285 and 288 has reopened to traffic

When we think about problems with bears in national parks, areas such as Yellowstone and Yosemite often come to mind, but bruins can be an issue "back East" as well. A picnic area along the Blue Ridge Parkway has been closed temporary to help resolve a bear-people food issue.

The climate is not static. Ice ages come and go, pushing rivers of ice south and then pulling them back north across continents as temperatures and snowfalls rise and fall. Animal and plant species either stay ahead of these icy incursions and adapt, or perish.

Even experienced travelers often are surprised to learn that some national park lodges still offer rooms without a private bathroom. In fact, in making a reservation at one of the lodges you might discover there is no choice other than a room that requires use of a community bathroom. While European visitors are not surprised and might even expect rooms without a private bathroom, many U.S. travelers don’t look kindly on the need to use a bathroom that is just down the hallway.

If you live in North Carolina and were hoping to attach a Blue Ridge Parkway commemorative 75th anniversary license plate onto your rig, you can forget about it. The foundation has decided too many obstacles stand in the way of producing the special plates.

Where once we had guidebooks, topographic maps, and campfire talks to help us appreciate and understand the national parks, there's now a growing number of electronic applications for your iPhones, iPod Touches, and other cellphones and media devices to overwhelm the senses.

Plans for celebrating the Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary in 2010 are moving along well. There's a rich mix of activities and events being planned, including community programs as well as professional seminars.

The Blue Ridge Parkway attracts more visitors than any other unit of the National Park System. Which makes this guide to lodging along the parkway so valuable.

Sunflowers, violets, trillium and other wildflowers are just around the proverbial corner in the Appalachian Mountains. You can spot these and dozens of others in Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks, as well as along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A coming infusion of $330,000 will help five units of the National Park System improve their trail networks.

Visitation to the National Park System in 2008 was, essentially, flat from the year before. There were spikes in some areas, and deep drops in others, but overall the 275 million visitors who were counted represented just 800,000 fewer than in 2007, according to preliminary data from the National Park Service.

Programs to lure youngsters into the parks. "Healthy Kids/Healthy Parks." Research to gauge the impact of visitation on park natural resources. Restoration work. These are just some of the projects that your taxable donations allowed to occur across the National Park System in 2008.

As the country careened toward what is beginning to look like a second Great Depression, citizens in North Carolina and Virginia paused on October 9 and 10 to consider the history of one of the great public accomplishments of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal 75 years ago: the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway.

Millions of motorists enjoy the Blue Ridge Parkway every year, but most have never heard of Stanley W. Abbott. That’s a shame. Abbott was the young landscape architect who threaded the road through the mountains and made it a scenic-recreational masterpiece.

To encourage eco-friendly operations, the National Park Service presents Environmental Achievement Awards each year to parks and concession companies that have excelled in incorporating high environmental standards into their operations. The 2007 awards were presented to Blue Ridge Parkway, Yosemite National Park, Delaware North Companies Parks and Resorts, and Xanterra Parks & Resorts.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the busiest of the flagship National Parks, reports 5% lower visitation at its main entrances and anticipates 250,000 fewer visitors this year. The related decline in visitor-based income and tax revenues has area businesses, employees, and governments fretting.

With ginseng fetching record high prices, illegal harvesting has increased in Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This is a serious federal crime. Convicted ginseng poachers get hefty fines and jail time.

National Geographic might be considered a gold standard authority on national parks. Why, then, is a hilariously flawed “10 Best National Parks” list included in a recently published National Geographic book? Is NG testing us to see if we’re paying attention?

It's been roughly six decades since the Blue Ridge Parkway's general management plan was tinkered with, so it shouldn't be too great a surprise that parkway officials are working on an update. However, what parkway officials are proposing might not sit well with everyone.

The National Park Service has a cumbersome conundrum on its hands at the Blue Ridge Parkway, where the agency is grappling with how to preserve scenic vistas along the 469-mile-long road while not making further inroads on habitat critical for the Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel.

A hallmark of driving the Blue Ridge Parkway - and most national park roads - has always been the rustic stone or wood guard rails that line the roadway. But now, that could all change.

During 2006, 11 homicides were investigated across the national park system. Two involved women who had been pushed off cliffs, one was a suicide, and one was the victim of a DUI accident.