I am in a small gaggle of tourists busily training our armament of camera lenses on goateed mountain goats as they grazed contentedly on wildflower-strewn emerald slopes that rise above Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. The goats are so close and nonchalant they could be models strutting a runway.

We love our cars, we love our parks, and we love to drive our cars in the parks. Well, at least when the traffic isn’t too bad, and we really don’t mind just going along for the ride. The windshield touring season is nearly here, so it’s time to start thinking about park trips. All of the national parkways are recommended. Here are a dozen other traverses, loops, and shuttles that belong on your short list.

Long after the public comment period closed on Glacier National Park's draft environmental impact statement regarding a railroad's request to bomb avalanche chutes on the park's southern boundary, the railroad apparently has succeeded in tweaking that document.

The good news from Glacier National Park is that there will be more seasonal employees on the ground this year. The bad news is that cyclic maintenance projects will continue to suffer.

How do you like your fish seasoned? A little mercury, perhaps some DDT? That's what you might get if you eat fish caught in national parks in the American West.

A plan to develop coalbed methane reserves in British Columbia just north of Glacier National Park have been dropped. However, there still are plans to develop coal reserves in the region.

Skyrocketing construction costs are threatening the ambitious rebuild of Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road, with latest estimates for the job at least $100 million more than initially thought.

It's only January, the Super Bowl has yet to be played, and the Rocky Mountain states are up to their necks in snow. Sooooooo, it must be time to book your summer national park vacation.

It's been months since Glacier National Park officials concluded after lengthy environmental studies that snowsheds, not 105mm howitzer shells, should be used to protect freight trains from avalanches sliding off the park's southern flanks. And yet Interior Department officials have yet to sign off on that decision.

While there's much concern across the country about kids losing touch with nature, that doesn't seem to be the case in Montana, where schoolchildren have created new postcards for the Glacier Natural History Association.

Drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road through Glacier National Park and you're immediately struck by the alpine beauty of this national park. Shimming lakes, waterfalls that seem to dangle from cliffs hundreds of feet in the air, glaciers off which the sun glints. But appearances can be deceiving.

Montana's two U.S. senators are seeking to have the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park declared a World Heritage Site in Danger because of proposed energy development near the headwaters of the Flathead River. This is just the latest flare-up over how British Columbia officials are managing energy development near the two national parks.

There's plenty of news around the national park system, if you take a look. Newspapers are questioning Yellowstone planners on their snowmobile decision, politicians are making hey with the Everglades, Glacier is celebrating its Peace Park status, and Valley Forge is facing development on its doorstep.

Three-quarters of a century ago, the peace and friendship between the United States and Canada led to creation of the world's first "Peace Park," Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. To commemorate that event, and to explore how best to manage transboundary protected areas, particularly Peace Parks, a conference will be held in September at Waterton Lakes National Park.