Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Here's your quick cheat sheet to five of the best units in the National Park System for finding wildlife this fall.

National parks actually glow in autumn. From the fluttering gold of aspens and larch in the parks along the spine of the Rocky Mountains to the oranges, yellows and reds of the hardwood forests that cover Eastern parks and even on the Southwest’s sandstone, fall is the season of incandescence in the park system. Where do you find these rainbows? Here’s your guide to the "best bets" for fall color in the National Park System.

Autumn travel may be all about the colors. Leaf-watchers head to Acadia, Shenandoah, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks in droves. Traffic jams aside, that’s a fine way to spend September and October. But before the leaves change, the birdwatchers are out looking for a lot of brown. The first weekend of September, after all, is World Shorebirds Day.

Will the National Park Service soon be pushing for more wilderness designations? That's difficult to say, in large part because only Congress can designate wilderness. Still, there's an effort under way by the Park Servie to take a look at wilderness possibilities across the park system.