The dogs were large, with pointy ears, and they appeared suddenly along the cobbled path, barking furiously. My husband Paul and I paused, then slowly crept past them as we murmured pet-friendly reassurances at their bared teeth. They jumped around a bit but did not draw nearer; all bark, no bite. A cheerful man hobbled down the path on his cane, reaffirming this in Portuguese and gestures and tone that conveyed his meaning to our linguistically challenged ears. Chuckling, he waved us on our way from the tiny stone village into a sparse forest in Portugal’s sole national park—Peneda-Gerês.

Stratton family lore has my ancestors migrating west on the Oregon Trail. I’m not entirely sure if I believe it, since trail use greatly declined when the Transcontinental Railroad was finished in 1869 and my relatives didn’t arrive in Oregon until the 1880s. But there are accounts of the trail being used through the 1890s, so it is possible. Either way, the Stratton clan ended up in eastern Oregon operating a stagecoach station on the road between John Day and Burns.

As my wife and I got out of our car in front of the visitor center at Colter Bay, we looked around the expansive parking lot to find--no one there. We were entirely alone at one of Grand Teton National Park's most popular summertime destinations. In just four months, hundreds of cars, trucks, and RVs will fill this and other lots at Signal Mountain, Jenny Lake and Jackson Lake lodges, but this was mid-week in February, and only the heated bathroom at the visitor center was open.

Dale Ditmanson, retired superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, used to say that we need to give national park visitors the best experience possible because they might never have a chance to visit again. Nowhere is that sentiment truer than in Rapa Nui National Park.