Yellowstone National Park

Not everyone is a painter, musician, or sculptor, but it seems that everyone is a photographer. Whether tracking Yellowstone wolves, following Glacier’s goats, or watching Yosemite waterfalls, all it takes is a camera. And that’s exactly what camera manufacturers count on: Making it easier and easier, especially in the new digital world, to produce quality photographs.

Yellowstone National Park officials are trying to figure out how a 32-year-old Californian fell to her death into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone just north of Tower Falls. The accident was reported Friday night and rangers spent the night in the canyon with the woman's body.

Wolves in Olympic National Park? I thought that issue was played out in the late 90s. I was glad to learn that the spark of idea had not died, and during a recent meeting on the Olympic peninsula the general attitude of the public surprised me. Instead of fear, there was excitement for the idea. "Bring them back," they said.

Two elderly Idaho men who planned a three-day fishing trip on Yellowstone National Park's Shoshone Lake have drowned, apparently victims of waves kicked up by gusting winds.

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.

With Yellowstone's healthy wolf population, you might think that elk, their main prey, would be on the dinner menu pretty much anywhere in the park. However, a University of Alberta wildlife biologist says topography, not wolf distribution, governs elk predation by wolves.

Continued dry, windy conditions have allowed the Dakota Complex of fires in Zion National Park to grow to nearly 10,000 acres in the park's backcountry. Fire bosses say they've contained just 10 percent of the fires, and the current weather conditions, the rugged terrain the fires are located within, and the possibility of thunderstorms are compounding efforts to get better control over the blazes.

Ever wonder what the most visited parks in the system are? How about least visited? The NPS office of statistics answers this question once a year with an ordered, ranked table cataloging recreation visits to each of the NPS managed units across the USA. So, what is the most visited park? Read on for the answer.

Of Yellowstone's five gateway towns, West Yellowstone is my favorite. It's the closest to the park, as Yellowstone's West Entrance is at the end of Yellowstone Avenue, and it has this wonderfully funky vibe flowing through it.

Computer animations can bring 18th-century cannon fire to life, but can they bring Gen-Yers to the national parks? Can an audiocast leading teens across a battlefield entice them enough to set foot in Saratoga National Historical Park? Can tracing a hike in Glacier National Park from the comforts of their homes convince this generation to beg their parents to visit Glacier on their next vacation? Those are questions that have more and more park managers searching for answers.

Too often politics and management of the national parks are entwined. Doubt it? The fingerprints of Vice President Dick Cheney are all over the Yellowstone snowmobile fracas, as well as on failed efforts to safeguard the park's famed cutthroat trout populations.

While park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga wants to rebuild a section of the road, the storm redesigned the Carbon River, in some places sculpting deep pools valuable to bull trout, a species protected by the Endangered Species Act.