It's no surprise that after 150 years the lighthouse at Cape Lookout National Seashore is in need of some repair work. Well, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has come up with nearly $500,000 to handle those repairs so the lighthouse can be reopened to the public.

Sometimes you just have to ask, “what were they thinking?!”

The folks at Cape Lookout National Seashore on the Outerbanks of North Carolina have a nice lineup of programs to keep you busy during October.

Quick, pick an ocean setting for next summer's national park vacation. Are you heading to the Northeast, the Northwest, or looking South or somewhere else for your destination?

Despite the storms that battered Cape Lookout National Seashore this summer, park officials report that the shorebird nesting season seems to have been successful, with good broods from piping plovers, oystercatchers, terns, and Wilson's plovers.

For 150 years, the Cape Lookout Lighthouse has alerted mariners to the shoals off the North Carolina coast. Among the many events Cape Lookout National Seashore is holding this anniversary year is a juried art exhibit open to painters and photographers alike.

It could be argued that the two most important jobs along the Eastern seaboard during the 19th century were that of lighthouse keeper and life-saver. The former worked hard to warn ships off shoals, while the latter worked to save those who ships foundered.

Two groups of boaters encountered problems recently at separate coastal parks, but the situations had vastly different outcomes. Seven teenagers in North Carolina fared immensely better than a group of adults in Mississippi. Four members of the latter group spent the night in the water and 1 is still missing.

If you're a lover of horse history, and wouldn't mind gaining ownership of a "Shackleford" horse, call the folks at Cape Lookout National Seashore.

A summer vacation at the beach is hard to beat. And now the folks at Cape Lookout National Seashore are making it more affordable than in recent years.

There was an essay recently that brought to my attention a startling figure: Even though there are nearly 1,700 marine protected areas in U.S. territorial waters, 99.9 percent of all our territorial waters were open to fishing in 2008.

The other day I read a story about efforts at Cape Lookout National Seashore to install an ADA accessible ramp. And that got me to wondering about how accessible the National Park System is.

Numerous sea turtles have been caught by unusually cold weather along the North Carolina coast since mid-November. That has led to dozens of rescues of the endangered reptiles in the past week at Cape Lookout National Seashore.

In the 1930s the National Park Service’s first plane, a 1928 Fairchild FC-2W2 piloted by legendary aviator Dave Driskill, shuttled passengers, mail, and other stuff to and from CCC camps in the Outer Banks. Now privately owned, it is still flying.

Tropical storm Hanna's approach to the Carolinas has forced some evacuations and closures at Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores, and more steps could be taken depending on the severity of the storm.

Fierce winter storms and shifting shoals gave birth to the "Graveyard of the Atlantic," where thousands of ships have foundered since record-keeping began in the 16th century. Beginning late in the 18th century, rescuers began patrolling the East Coast in search of such wrecks.

For two years officials at Cape Lookout National Seashore have been working on updating their Commercial Services Plan. And from what they've been hearing from members of the public, seashore officials might be best off not to change a thing.

A trio of conservation groups is asking the National Park Service to reinstate bans against personal watercraft in Gulf Islands and Cape Lookout national seashores as well as Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. If the agency balks, the groups say they'll take it to court over the matter.

For years, summer trips to Cape Cod were an annual ritual for my family. My parents had retired to the Cape, and our boys loved romping in the surf and building castles in the sand. Lobster feasts, game-fishing, and whale watching were added benefits, as were exploring the seashore’s lighthouses, roaming its dunes, and looking for sea creatures in its mudflats.

Whether it's the result of climate change or simply a growing and expanding population of leatherback turtles is for the scientists to determine. For now, just the fact that a leatherback turtle has left a nest of eggs on a beach at Cape Hatteras National Seashore is pretty exciting news.