It's just about time for the fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park to put on their synchronous light show. The park will be providing shuttle service to the Elkmont area to watch these amazing insects, but you'll need a ticket.

Backcountry paddlers soon will have a new place to pitch their tents in Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. The National Park Service has approved a plan to add two campsites, each with two tent pads, and one larger that will hold four tent pads, at Mukooda Lake.

With the growing popularity in star gazing, more and more national park units are being recognized for their dark night skies, and more interpretive programs are rising over the National Park System.

When someone says the word, “Alabama,” what do you imagine? For most, the melody of “Sweet Home Alabama” pops into their head, or scenes from the movie by the same name. For me, most of what I pictured stemmed from the popular television show “Hart of Dixie” about a young doctor moving to the state in search of a mystery father – not exactly based on reality. What I didn’t know until I moved into the next-door Florida Panhandle was that Alabama is an ecologically diverse, beautiful state, stretching from sugar-sand coastline to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.