National Parks Traveler

A glance around the national parks shows opportunities to spend the year-end holidays in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley, Native American celebrations at Grand Canyon National Park, and trail work at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

A section of Blue Ridge Parkway just north of Asheville, North Carolina, will close next week so work can resume on stabilizing the road bed.

A former staffer on the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands has been appointed deputy director of the National Park Service for congressional and external relations.

Though it looks anything but a great habitat for prehistoric animals today, Big Bend National Park's landscape has a rich connection with the long-ago past. And to display some of that history, park officials are proposing to build a fossil exhibit along the Fossil Discovery Trail.

With hunting season in Virginia arriving soon, Shenandoah National Park officials have announced that portions of Skyline Drive through the park will be close nightly, beginning on Monday.

W. Clark Bunting, who most recently was president and general manager of the Discovery Channel, next week takes the helm of the National Parks Conservation Association.

One of the most exciting and intriguing ways to experience Dinosaur National Monument is from a raft floating down either the Green or Yampa rivers as they course through this magnificent landscape. And if you want to land a permit for a private float trip, the Park Service is making it a tad bit easier by moving the application process online.

The precarious future of wolves on Isle Royale National Park will be the subject of four public meetings this month.

National park vistas often are breathtaking. They practically beg you to head off into the landscape. The way Andy Drinnon captured the view from Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park does just that...but it also stands on its own as a thing of beauty for the way he captures nature.

With another layer of budget sequestration coming in January, barring any congressional intervention, national parks are cinching their belts wherever possible. At Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin, that means reduced services this winter.