Archive List

I am a social hiker. For me, one of the highlights of hiking is meeting friendly and energetic people on the trail. That’s why I love the camaraderie at LeConte Lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The lodge, which can only be reached by foot, is luxurious considering it’s located on top of Mt. LeConte at 6,593 ft. Groups come here for family reunions and some people train for weeks before attempting the trip because it’s the only hiking they do all year.

Call it long overdue housekeeping, but the National Park Service is working to revise 30-year-old regulations that affect non-federal oil and gas development that could occur, or already is occurring, in some of its units. In other words, energy development within a park on lands owned by anyone other than the federal government, such as states or even private landowners. The bottom-line of the revisions is to better protect parks from energy development.

Rangers at Grand Canyon National Park are trying to determine how a man fell 200 feet to his death from the South Rim near Mather Point.

If Denali National Park and Preserve is in your travel plans for next summer, beginning Tuesday you'll be able to make your reservation for a ride on the park's shuttle buses and for a site in one of the park's four largest campgrounds.

A woman hiking up Angels Landing in Zion National Park apparently tripped and fell about 1,000 feet to her death, according to park officials.

Earlier this month Traveler readers compared notes on national park memorabilia collections -- T-shirts, ball caps, hiking medallions, lapel pins and whatnot. Dan Martin had an innovative way to display his collection of hiking medallions -- he buys two from each park and attaches one to his hiking stick and another to a piece of driftwood he found near Yellowstone National Park.

With Friday kicking off the holiday shopping season, quite a few folks more than likely will have national parks on their minds. And so do we at the Traveler, and so we've decided to offer for your consideration our first Traveler Gift Guide.

National Park Service officials are looking for feedback on how a grant program designed to preserve World War II internment camps that imprisoned Japanese Americans fared.

John Muir long has been closely associated with nature and the national parks, and rightly so. If you admire him and his writings, let us point you to a site where you can peruse thousands of his letters, sketches, photos and journals.

The 11-mile-long Loop Road that winds through Cades Cove at Great Smoky Mountains National Park is scheduled to be closed Tuesday and part of Wednesday to allow for spraying operations intended to save the hemlock trees that line the route.

The Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail is the first of its kind. It's a trail whose hallmark is geology. And what geology that is.

With Thanksgiving tomorrow and Christmas and the other year-end holidays right around the corner, we decided to spring two questions on you in this week's Reader Participation Day: One, any plans to mix Thanksgiving with a national park visit, and two, what item would you like to find in your holiday stocking that would make your national park visits more enjoyable?

One of the most recognized symbols of the American desert is the saguaro cactus, and that fact makes those multi-armed giants attractive targets for thieves. A tip from a concerned citizen, excellent work by rangers at Saguaro National Park and great cooperation from the U. S. Attorney's office have resulted in hefty sentences for two cactus poachers.