Smithsonian, among other stories of ours that they've liked, picked up one on new totem poles at Glacier Bay National Park.

At Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, the glory of nature is on display. The park is packed with 3.3 million acres of glaciers, wildflowers and water. But the area’s indigenous people haven’t always been celebrated. As National Parks Traveler reports, the Huna Tlingit people, whose ancestors lived in what is now the park, have had a contentious history with the National Park Service. But the relationship has improved in recent years. Now, in honor of the Huna Tlingit’s connection to the area, two gigantic totem poles—each weighing 2,000 pounds and rising 20 feet tall—have been erected in Bartlett Cove.

Buzzflash even reads Traveler! Our story on Susan LaPierre, wife of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, and her appointment to the National Park Foundation's board of directors caught their eyes.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration ordered the National Park Service (NPS) to temporarily stop tweeting. One can assume that this was done, in part, to ensure that the NPS would get the message to stop tweeting anything "controversial' -- like actual facts that might debunk the White House's "alternative facts."

That action was one of the first hints that the executive branch was going to apply its right-wing ideology in administering the National Park Service. That ideological application has grown more apparent with time. One only need look to the growing influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a key Trump supporter, on the NPS and its parent, the Department of the Interior. In one telling example, the wife of Wayne LaPierre, the longtime head and chief firebrand of the NRA, has been appointed to the National Park Service Foundation board. As National Parks Traveler reported on August 28...

The Hill, possibly the paper of record of Washington, D.C., looked far West to the Traveler when we reported on P. Daniel Smith being named acting director of the National Park Service.

Smith retired from the NPS in 2014 after decades working at the agency, most recently as superintendent of the Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia. He came back this month to be deputy director.

The agency’s plan to name Smith acting director was first reported earlier in January by National Parks Traveler.

The staff at Today.com reached out to us concerning the protest over the possibility of Starbucks being served in lodges at Yosemite National Park.

"Concessions operations in the majority of the big national parks — Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, etc. — are run by corporations, many of them international," Kurt Repanshek, founder and editor-in-chief of the site National Parks Traveler, told TODAY Food.

With rustic interiors, elk on some of the menus and names like the "Jordan Pond House" or the like, many of the restaurants do seem to do a fair job of blending into their environment, even though most are essentially large corporate restaurants that can feed thousands of visitors a day.

"Whether they have a 'corporate feel' depends on how you define that personally," Repanshek said. "Some obviously feel like large cafeterias because of the need to quickly feed large numbers. Others can be more intimate."

Most recently, the News of St. John, a blog out of that Caribbean island that is home to Virgin Islands National Park, has picked up Traveler's coverage on the operation of the Caneel Bay Resort.

The National Parks Traveler published a great article this morning that details everything wrong with what Plaskett is proposing. They attempted to speak with Plaskett several times, but she’s refused.

The point of all this, dear readers, is that the Traveler is looked to by many other media outlets for our national parks coverage. You can help us bolster and broaden that coverage by supporting our nonprofit media organization. Help ensure that our daily parks coverage not only continues, but grows to bring you more and more robust content from the parks. You can donate online, or send a check to National Parks Traveler, P.O. Box 980452, Park City, UT, 84098.