In the name of cross-border relations, I sip on King Cole orange pekoe tea from New Brunswick and eat gingersnaps connected to one of America’s favorite First Families while hearing what Eleanor Roosevelt accomplished as a diplomat, activist, United Nations spokesperson and political force.
It’s a rare double heron day at the only national park dedicated to preserving aquatic plants. A Yellow-crowned Night Heron is stalking crustaceans in a water lily pond straight out of a Claude Monet painting. A Green Heron clutching a lotus stalk stands surrounded by pink and white flowers, huge, cup-shaped leaves and bright green pods that look like shower heads.
Across the rumpled landscape of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, tribal members of the Cherokee Nation head out in springtime to collect a traditional plant called sochan.
A new visitors’ center — one with unique architecture that harmonizes with the landscape and showcases its rich history — will strengthen the connection visitors have with Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
During the 17th century, Spanish explorers cut the Royal Road of Interior Lands in the Southwest. Our intrepid reporter takes to the route today to see where it leads.
Scenery and history come together at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, which preserves a western passageway cut by Daniel Boone and fought over during the Civil War.
Changing the name of a national park is no easy thing, indeed, it might be impossible. Proof of that can be found in the four fruitless efforts to rename Mount Rainier National Park as Mount Tacoma National Park.
Somewhere in the ten miles from the visitor center at Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in St. Paul, Minnesota, across the river to Minneapolis, I crossed an invisible line. It would have risen like a wall of ice, perhaps a mile high, just 15,000 years ago – a line demarcating the extent of the last glaciation.