It could take three months or longer to clean up a rock slide and reopen a section of Interstate 40 on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That means getting to the park from some areas will be a bit tricky. It also means don't rely on your GPS units to find a shortcut, as that could spell trouble.
Fall can be a downright gorgeous time to take a hike in a national park. The air is crisp, the bugs are gone, the crowds have vanished, and the landscape is gorgeous. Just don't forget that the bears are trying to put on some extra calories to get through the winter. And a hungry bear can be an ornery bear.
Researchers at Great Smoky Mountains National Park are looking for a few good volunteers for a one-day project at the park on October 31, 2009. If you'd like to learn some new skills and are up to several miles of hiking, here are the details.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park lures visitors with its rumpled, mist-cloaked mountains, its leaping streams, dense forests, and Appalachian history. The thrill of hearing a bull elk's bugle echoing off the mountainsides also is becoming a powerful lure, thanks to an elk recovery program that's developed a healthy herd of the iconic ungulates in the Cataloochee Valley and Oconaluftee areas.
A popular drive in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is getting an overhaul next spring. Work will close the Cades Cove Loop Road but not other facilities at Cades Cove for about three months, and the project will use a method designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
How should wildland fires be managed at Great Smoky Mountains National Park? The park is updating its plan to answer that question, and has prepared an Environmental Assessment as part of the process. If you have an opinion, now's the time to let the park know your views.
Sure, you know what can be found in this or that park, but do you what things aren’t found there? Take this quiz and find out. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll tattle on you.
Where do you go to digitally capture fall colors in the National Park System? The National Park Foundation released a list of the Top 10 parks for fall color the other day, and there are some old stalwarts, and some upstarts as well!
Visit the Sugarlands Visitor Center at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the coming months and you'll come away with a true appreciation of art in nature.
You can add Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the growing list of parks that are offering stargazing programs thanks to the generally dark skies overhead.
Horace Kephart is best-known for his role in raising public support for what became the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and as the author of two non-fiction books that have become classics. Tucked away for 80 years was a literary surprise: the completed manuscript for a Kephard novel. It's just been published by the Great Smoky Mountains Association and the timing is appropriate: this year is the park's 75th anniversary.
The requirement to keep dogs on a leash is observed by most—but not all—visitors to national parks. A recent incident in Great Smoky Mountains National Park involving a pit bull and a deer offers a vivid example of one reason for the regulation.
National parks represent a spectacular legacy handed down to today’s generations, but it is one that also carries a hefty responsibility of stewardship. That becomes quickly obvious in Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. This notion of responsible stewardship is not new at all. In many ways it’s trite.
Camping in the national parks is a lot of fun, and so is this quiz. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you explain the modern-day appeal of backcountry camping in the context of the classic three-stage Pastoral Retreat model elucidated by literary historian Leo Marx.
If you've ever wondered how they make sorghum syrup, head to Great Smoky Mountains National Park this Saturday to find out the process. That and other mountain arts will be on display during the park's annual Mountain Life Festival at the park's Mountain Farm Museum.
One of the oddest sounds you might encounter in a national park at this time of year is the high-pitched squeal of elk. Better known as "bugling," this sound is as magical as that of a wolf howl hanging in the air.
Take this quiz and see if you are piscatorially competent. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we'll make you tell us where the fish are biting.
Newfound Gap Road (U.S. 441), the only highway crossing Great Smoky Mountains National Park between Gatlinburg and Cherokee, will be closed from sunset Tuesday, September 1, until late afternoon Wednesday, September 2.
Spam, fruit, and rainwater sustained a lost 70-year-old backpacker in Great Smoky Mountains National Park who was hoisted to safety Sunday morning by a Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter after being stranded atop an outcrop for the past week.
A backpacker missing since Tuesday in the rugged backcountry of Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been found in good condition but will have to spend another night in the woods, officials said Saturday afternoon.
Searchers who have been scouring parts of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in search of a missing backpacker hoped to be aided Saturday by dogs trained to pick up the human scent.
Wet and extremely rugged conditions were hampering a search Friday at Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a 70-year-old backpacker who had been expected to return from a trip on Tuesday.
The National Park Service's National Leadership Council met in Ohio last week. The meeting of the agency's top management was supposed to be the first under the direction of Jon Jarvis as Park Service director. Political gamesmanship, and apparently a dose of bureaucracy, unfortunately left Mr. Jarvis wearing his Pacific West Region director's hat.
Roads in two NPS areas that were closed recently due to rockslides have reopened in time for the coming weekend. The routes are an eight-mile section of Little River Road in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Hurricane Ridge Road in Olympic National Park.
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.
Heading to Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the weekend? Then know that a section of the Little River Road near the Elkmont Campground has been closed by a rock slide.
To those who love mushrooms, what could be finer than sauteing up a mess of freshly collected 'shrooms to go along with your freeze-dried dinner or the trout you hooked in the backcountry of a national park? A teaspoon of garlic, a dash of salt, and a couple cranks of the pepper mill and you'll have a wonderful complement to your meal. Unless, of course, you picked the wrong mushroom, in which case this could be your last meal.
You won’t need to be a genealogist to enjoy Quiz #66. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you write on the whiteboard 100 times: “Contrary to popular opinion, there is no letter ‘a’ in the word cemetery.”
Recent comments
5 min 39 sec ago
24 min 57 sec ago
41 min 10 sec ago
3 hours 13 sec ago
3 hours 32 min ago
3 hours 40 min ago
3 hours 45 min ago
4 hours 11 min ago
5 hours 21 min ago
5 hours 39 min ago