Fall and winter months often are best spent researching road trips, and to help you plan a trek through the Southwest with stops at such places as Mesa Verde National Park and Hovenweep National Monument there's a great new website that takes you down the "Trail of the Ancients."

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.

Whether you can thank the hoopla around National Parks: America's Best Idea, or attribute it to the weak economy, there are a number of lodging deals available to be had around the National Park System.

Quite a few U.S. national parks are listed as World Heritage Sites, and they're often in the news. There's a handy website out there run by the National Park Service's Office of International Affairs that can help you stay abreast of issues involving this sites.

Forty-five years after the first wilderness areas were designated in the United States, the Mesa Verde Wilderness area remains largely unknown to the public, even though most people in Cortez can see it every day.

Talk regional cuisines and when the region that pops up is the Southwest you know the talk is going to get spicy: Chipotle peppers with their rich, smoky flavor, habaneros with their bite, and potentially potent chile rellenos. But Southwestern cuisine is more diverse than its bite might indicate. You can discover that during a meal in the Metate Room at Mesa Verde National Park, where the menu is built around bison, elk, turkey and quail, as well as squash, black beans, and tortillas.

Digital mapping. This relatively new technology is a boon to archaeologists and preservationists. It's already been employed at Mesa Verde National Park, and now plans are in the works to digitally map the focal point of Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Dumb and Dumber got a big surprise at Mesa Verde National Park. Sometimes even a blind hog will find an acorn.

Dumb and Dumber trips can take interesting twists and turns. We’d seen similar cliff dwellings just a few miles away at Mesa Verde National Park but this Ute Mountain Tribal Park experience was oh, so different.

Another summer is almost here, and with it, the opportunity for those who work in parks to field some excellent questions from visitors. Along the way, those rangers and volunteers will also undoubtedly encounter a few new candidates for the wacky question of the week.

The Pueblo Indians in New Mexico and northern Arizona are descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans who abandoned the cliff dwellings now preserved in Mesa Verde National Park. Does the modern pueblo culture straddle the ages? See for yourself. Just cue this composite audio/video, turn up the volume, and get ready for a surprise.

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.

Sure, the calendar says January, there's a lot of snow out there across the country, and you haven't even thought about filing your income taxes. But it's still not too early to begin planning your national park vacation for this summer.

A report released by the NPS Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs offers a summary of park-related actions by the 110th Congress, which ended its work last month.

In the past, my national park visiting has been too intermittent and unfocused for comfort. But this year my New Year’s Resolutions are going to provide a sense of purpose and direction. Five parks is a very doable agenda. My list includes three Sure Things, a True Confession, and one Unfinished Business.

Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park celebrates its 102nd birthday on June 29. Mesa Verde's 4,000+ archaeological sites document a culture that flourished for centuries before the last generation abruptly and mysteriously abandoned its ancestral home. Did you know there might not have been a Mesa Verde National Park at all if it hadn’t been for Virginia McClurg?

On a clear day, you often can see for miles and miles. But as a report from the National Parks Conservation Association points out, clear days are harder and harder to find in our national parks under the Bush administration's relatively laissez-faire approach to coal-fired power plants.

There are chick flicks, and now even chick national park retreats.

If your schedule is flexible, you might want to take a look at these lodging deals at Yosemite, Olympic, and Mesa Verde national parks.

Time is constantly a threat to Mesa Verde National Park. As it passes, and brings with it erosion and earthquakes, the park's ruins are at risk of collapse. But a new laser technology is providing the park with, in essence, blue prints of the ruins.

The International Mountain Bicycling Association has a friend in the National Park Service's Intermountain regional director, Michael Snyder. In a recent memo to park superintendents in his region, Mr. Snyder says IMBA can provide "some great partnership ... that you may want to take advantage of."