Have you ever heard a man describe a woman as being “so beautiful it hurts”? Well, it’s a phrase that suits Crater Lake National Park perfectly. Just under 2,000 feet deep, Crater Lake is the clearest, cleanest, and deepest body of water in the United States. To the Klamath Indians, it was a sight too sacred for human eyes. To their way of thinking, to gaze upon the azure waters was to risk “death and lasting sorrow.”

You’ll want to read this, even if you’re familiar with the park. Some of these numbers may surprise you.

Wilderness. It's where the wild things are. It's a place where the stress of everyday life in the "real" world can be swept away.

Many national parks have historic lookouts that are, or should be, listed on the National Historic Lookouts Register. Visitors who know where to look can see lots of splendid examples.

I should have known better than to ask.

If you're flexible enough to take a fall trip to some of the iconic national parks in the Western United States, there are a number of lodges that are reporting late-season availability. Lodges in Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Crater Lake, Grand Canyon, and Death Valley national parks all show some rooms available during the months of September and October.

In the early 1900s, there were plenty of ideas for ways the new agency called the National Park Service could "improve" the parks. Here are a couple whose time never came, perhaps in part due to the "bad times" during World War I and the Great Depression.

Have you ever had the itch to fly over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter? Do you want a bird's eye view of Crater Lake? Or do you believe the airspace over national parks should be reserved strictly for, well, the birds?

An aviation company that offers helicopter tours of central Oregon wants to add Crater Lake National Park to its flight plans, but opposition to the proposal is mounting.

Lady of the Woods is the figure of a woman carved from a large volcanic boulder in Crater Lake National Park. The carver was Dr. Earl Russell Bush, a physician working for the Corps of Engineers, in October of 1917.

In the early 1900s, some national parks existed, but getting to them was problematic. Then was born the idea to develop a "National Park-to-Park Highway," one that would run through 11 states and connect 13 national parks.

You could call it a postage stamp-sized history of the National Park System, but the history of park scenes on U.S. postage is really quite colorful and carries a few stories with it.

The Pacific Crest Trail ranges from Canada to Mexico, running through Washington, Oregon, and California along the way, traversing not one but seven units of the National Park System in the process. While mountain bikers are not supposed to use the trail, recently some have been poaching sections in California.

MSNBC has compiled a Top 10 National Park Lodges list for the purpose of helping us choose where to “sleep in style on a summer escape to our nation's national parks.” They might want to re-state that. Two of the lodges aren’t in the United States and another is said to be in a park that, technically speaking, doesn’t exist yet.

If you've ever heard a frog doing its “ribbet” thing anywhere along the Pacific Coast, it's probably been a Pacific Treefrog. And if you’ve ever seen one of these little critters up close, you know why many consider it one of the most fascinating of all the amphibians.

The American Marten is a rare North Woods animal that you'll probably never see, save for paw prints in the snow. This brown, bushy-tailed little critter, which looks something like a cross between a mink and a house-cat, was prized for its luxurious fur and darn near trapped to extinction in the United States during the 19th century. Today, despite habitat losses and related problems, the American Marten still inhabits much of its historical range.

With waters that shimmer azure and forested flanks, the cataclysmic birth of Crater Lake National Park is usually little more than an afterthought for most visitors to this jewel.

It's easy to determine that Crater Lake is not the deepest lake in North America when you focus on maximum depth. But what happens when you compare lakes by "average" depth?

Talk volcanoes and national parks and folks usually think of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and perhaps Lassen Volcanic National Park. In truth, though, there are at least 13 units of the national park system that have a volcanic past in some form or fashion.

Local opposition to a proposed doubling in entrance fees at Crater Lake National Park apparently has worked.