A senior National Park Service manager based in New York state was found to have misused park funds, retaliated against an employee who voiced concerns about her official travel, and let visitors stay in a ranger station that was not approved park housing, according to an investigation.

I stumbled across a video the other day that further convinced me that I need to move Gates of the Arctic National Park higher on my to-do list. In it, two septuagenarians set off on a three-week canoe trip down the Noatak River, a river the park staff tells us "drains the largest mountain-ringed river basin in America that is still virtually unaffected by human activities."

A hiker in Saguaro National Park evidently can thank his pants for avoiding a painful series of rabies vaccines following an encounter with a fox on the Miller Creek Trail near the park's boundary with Coronado National Forest.

As beautiful as Mount Rainier National Park is during warm, calm weather, it can be extremely dangerous when a snowstorm rolls in with rangers or researchers on the mountain or in its forests without cell coverage. Thanks to a seven-figure gift from the estate of a Washington woman, it soon will be easier to track those individuals even at the height of a storm.