With winter near, the gates to Chinook and Cayuse passes through Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state are about to swing shut for the season.

In the best-selling children’s novel Island of the Blue Dolphins, the lead character was a Native American woman left on San Nicolas Island by herself from 1835 to 1853. The story, it turns out, was not entirely fiction.

Here's an enticing offer: If you own vacant land within the boundaries of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, you might be able to swap it for a residential property the National Park Service owns in the Wilsonia Historic District in Kings Canyon.

Yosemite National Park officials are proposing an overhaul of the Wawona Wastewater Treatment System, which suffers from an over-taxed and antiquated system for handling human wastes from the southwestern end of the park.