Features

With the arrival of summer, the national parks begin to fill with RVs, minivans, SUVs, and tour buses. Fifty years ago, Americans in their wood-paneled station wagons might linger in a national park for a week or two, but today many visitors try to tag as many parks as possible on their too-short vacations. Except at Isle Royale, that is.

Conserving wildlife unimpaired in the national parks for the enjoyment of future generations can be tricky in today's recreational circles. At North Cascades National Park in Washington state, park staff work to balance the needs of peregrine falcons and climbers who share the same habitat.

From an outcrop of flint in today's northern Texas, spear points and other Clovis-era tools spread across the continent thousands of years ago. Today the spear points are one of the most famous and defining items known to North American archaeology. But what's to be seen at Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument today...?

I expected a Grizzly Adams type when I headed to Alabama to meet the “Bear Whisperer,” but Chris Seals is lean and lanky, his Southern drawl just distinct enough to make him feel familiar to locals. Seals was here because black bears have slowly been returning to northeastern Alabama, where the 15,000 acres of Little River Canyon National Preserve run along the ridge tops, and he let me tag along when word came that one bear had stumbled into a trap.

Sure, loading up the RV and heading into the National Park System sounds easy. But is it? If you're not familiar with the lay of the park system, these ten tips will help prepare you for what you'll encounter.

The Everglades are a vast network of subtropical freshwater wetland and estuarine ecosystems that once spanned the length and breadth of south Florida. Fifty years of dredging and diking, starting in 1948, greatly reduced their extent, altering water flow patterns and causing widespread ecological damage.

Last month we pointed to some of the frustrations that can be had when trying to navigate the overall NPS.gov domain. Let's now take a look at the individual haves and have-nots of the National Park System and some of the things that differentiate them.

I've long been a paddler, but primarily of canoes and occasionally rafts. While I have a few times gotten into a sea kayak and paddled away from shore, I never fully embraced the sport. Until now. Having placed an order for a sea kayak worthy of big lakes and ocean waters, while awaiting delivery I naturally turned my attention to where in the National Park System this new hobby would fit. And the results were fairly breathtaking in the parkscapes they entailed.

For want of timber and other natural resources, the federal government during a three-decade period early in the 20th century steadily whittled away at Yosemite National Park, eventually carving off about a third of that icon of the National Park System. Leap forward to early in the 21st century, and for want of energy and multiple-use benefits President Trump is trying to remove 85 percent of Bears Ears National Monument from within its original borders.

The National Park System has an almost $12 billion maintenance backlog. Of that backlog, $186 million belongs to Mount Rainier National Park. Contributing photographer Rebecca Latson recently visited Mount Rainier and reports on what kind of projects this national park plans for reducing that backlog while putting a personal face on the term "deferred maintenance."

Nineteen months after the beginning of a major renovation project on the historic Paradise Inn's Annex at Mount Rainier National Park, May 17 marked the grand reopening of both the inn and annex to the public. Photographer Rebecca Latson was present to mark the celebration, meet those involved in the historic restoration, and witness for herself the results of this amazing undertaking that occurred at an elevation of 5,400 feet above sea level, under summer sun and winter snows.

If you’re wondering how to choose the best national park for your next RV adventure, you’re not alone. We were clueless too when our full-time RVing life began in 2007. But after one giant boulder collision, several tree branch sideswipes, and 12 years traveling, we’ve got national park RV camping logistics down to a science. Here’s your chance to learn from our early blunders with foolproof tips for a flawless getaway.

Nearly 300 million years ago, in a sandy desert now preserved as Coconino sandstone at Grand Canyon National Park, some creatures walked across an area left moist very likely by an oasis. Those tracks, revealed today in a remote area of the national park, likely point to the transition of amphibians to reptiles and reflect another of the wonders held within the National Park System.

Whether you’re traveling by car or by jeep, the approaches to Utah’s Canyonlands National Park rank among the most scenic in the West. Following Utah Highway 211 down Indian Creek Canyon into the Needles District, or jouncing along a rugged backcountry route into the park’s western side, you’re witness to geologic processes acting on a vast scale. There’s another entrance to Canyonlands, though, which runs at river level, and this is the one my wife and I like best. This spring Bessann and I steered our canoe down the Green River into the northern end of the park, heading for its confluence with the Colorado River 50 miles downstream. It was a slower approach, one which let us savor the sights and sounds along one of the Southwest’s great desert waterways.

Water defines the arid West. Sporadic and intermittent water - think flash floods, freeze/thaw and steady erosion - sculpts the landscape, but it takes permanent water to create conditions for human settlement. At Pipe Spring National Monument in northern Arizona, the Park Service has done an exemplary job of telling the human water story from three perspectives: Paiutes, the original inhabitants; Mormons, a big wave of Anglo settlers that stayed; and the U.S. government.

Spanish explorers and wayfarers traveled across the Southwest, and through present-day Utah, 250 years ago, but what is the chance that one dropped some coins along the way while resting near the river we know as the Colorado? Or, in light of the estimated dates of the coins, were they trade pieces passed along going back two centuries more?

Since 2008, a program to return fishers, a small forest carnivore, to Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades national parks has been an ongoing effort with help from Washington's National Park Fund. Though not an overnight success, some of the relocated animals are sticking around.

After long days at our respective jobs, the gym, fishing, and errands, my husband and I met on our long, brown couch. Balancing dinner on our laps, we fired up the laptop and made a (metaphorical) bee-line to Amazon Prime to watch our month’s long obsession. No, not Game of Thrones, nor catching up on the Avenger’s movies. Instead, we tuned in to Ken Burns’ documentary series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”

There is on the sandy southern tip of Cape Hatteras National Seashore a rather nondescript club-shaped stretch of beach that in summer attracts an astonishing number of piping plovers that seemingly treat South Point as a last refueling stop of sorts before winging off to their wintering grounds.

Bits and pieces of the past, from a chest of drawers that served as an 1894 wedding present to men's trousers and even a seed collection, reside in the Collections Preservation Center just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.