A course in ice age geology comes with the landscape when you hike the Ice Age National Scenic Trail.

South Pass, located in southwest Wyoming, was the key that opened the door for emigrant wagons and handcarts to cross the Rocky Mountains in the early and mid-1800s. The 20-mile wide, sagebrush-covered saddle topped a gradual incline that appeared more like a prairie than a mountain pass.

An iconic early 20th-century mountain home along the Blue Ridge Parkway built by textile magnate Moses Cone and his wife, Bertha, is being restored to its elegant original appearance.

The bus came to a stop on the gravel along the road. My son and I stood up, grabbed our packs from the overhead racks, and started down the aisle. The other passengers stared as we left the bus and slung our packs on our backs. They seemed surprised that anyone could get off the bus at a place like this.

While some national parks are so busy that they require reservations, others make it easy to get off the beaten path – like Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas.

What, more books on Bears Ears? Yes, and there cannot be too many books on this remarkable landscape at this moment when there is a chance that protection for this wonderful and sacred place will be restored. Trump took much of it away, now maybe Biden will bring it back.

When the U.S. Army in 1849 bought a fur trading post near the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers on the windswept plains of the Wyoming Territory, it wasn't exactly a turnkey operation.

Don't think that because historic Fruita seems to be mentioned in the same breadth with "Capitol Reef National Park" that this park isn't for hikers and backpackers. It is one of the more rugged and demanding parks in the system, one that tests not only how much water you can carry, but at times your route-finding skills.

Of 19 national historic trails administered by the National Park Service in conjunction with several other federal agencies, four – California, Oregon, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express - follow the Platte River Valley across Nebraska. Both the California and the Oregon National Historic Trails pass through Ash Hollow, a favorite stop for many pioneers as noted in their journals.

Beneath the waves that roll ashore on the Olympic Coast is a symphony of life. Clinging to the rocks and going largely unnoticed by many beach visitors, a cast of characters straight out of a Sci-Fi movie busily move about. It may seem like the most hostile of environments but, to countless animals and seaweeds, it’s heaven on Earth.

This lesser-known national park in Maryland contains significant natural beauty, with some presidential history for good measure.

The giant sequoias, the world’s most massive trees, have been in California’s Sierra Nevada for 200 million years. Now this species that stood when dinosaurs walked the Earth faces new threats. Is its longevity at risk?

Bayou country is a hard place to live sometimes. It’s home to tough survivors. Locals in beat-up pickup trucks roar past me up highway 69/285, the Big Thicket National Preserve Byway, as I turn off at the visitor center. I’m looking for just that kind of adaptability to harsh conditions. Specifically, I have come to find Big Thicket’s carnivorous plants. More generally, I want to learn how life survives here. Because, as I look around, the Thicket seems undaunted by the recent storms.

Seaweed and sea turtles aren't the only objects that wash ashore at Padre Island National Seashore, which is why it's good to have more than a few people lending their time to collect that which doesn't belong.

As Covid-19 spread across the world, something else was going viral online — sea chanteys. And one national park became a global leader in sea music before it was trendy.

The Battle of Glorieta Pass represented the high water mark for a bold Confederate offensive into Union Territory on the western frontier. It emphasized the importance of a well-protected supply chain, which the Confederates lacked.

In 1948, a World War II-era bomber crashed into Lake Mead, the massive reservoir formed by Hoover Dam that straddles the Arizona-Nevada border. After several failed attempts to locate the plane, it was finally discovered in the early 2000s—still remarkably intact. As lake levels fall, will the draw to see the aircraft finish it off?

It’s no secret glaciers are retreating due to global warming trends. Different federal agencies have set up glacial monitoring programs to track these changes in the national parks. But don’t fret about a total disappearance of glaciers just yet. There are national parks in both the U.S. and Canada where you can still see, and even stand on, a glacier.

Walking the Canal towpath towards Georgetown, one comes across a sign that is literally almost in the Potomac River, reading in urgent letters, “Deadly undertow, Get to shore.” But this undertow is only one of the Potomac’s lethal actions; it is also capable of serious flooding causing immense damage. In fact, it was a series of such floods that propelled the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to change course, from its historic role of commercial transport to one of becoming a conduit for wildlife, and entering the National Park System as a National Historical Park.

Little did I know when my family slept in an oTENTik in Georgian Bay Islands National Park in 2016, and when I did a solo night in a MicrOcube in Riding Mountain National Park in 2017, that we were part of a quiet camping revolution.