Author and professor John Elder envisioned the ideals for Vermont’s only national park at the opening of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in 1998, calling it "...an entirely new kind of park. It must be one where the human stories and the natural history are intertwined..."

Thanksgiving week brought a lot of snow to much of the country. I returned home to find 8-9 inches of the white stuff in the yard, and a decided chill (low teens) in the air. All of which naturally got me thinking about how to enjoy the winter months in the cold weather side of the National Park System. If you’re looking to enjoy parks chilled and blanketed by winter, here are some destinations to consider.

Almost every NPS site has more interesting items in its archives that it has room to display to the public, so choosing the ones to exhibit is an on-going challenge. The staff at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site had one solution last year—letting the public "co-curate" an exhibit by voting on-line for items to be displayed. It was such a success they're repeating the program and expanding it to a second site, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park.

The next you find yourself in Vermont to visit Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, be sure to spend a little time checking out Woodstock. And to help you on your exploration of the town, pick up the 32-page New Birth of Freedom: A Walk Through the Civil War Home Front in Woodstock, Vermont, at the park.