Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established 74 years ago this month. Now this big, automobile-convenient park attracts more than 9 million visitors a year and entertains them with forested mountainsides, winding roads, flowering shrubs, pioneer-era relics, and other delights. Great Smoky has great scenery, interesting history, and amazing biodiversity.

It was 75 years ago that the first Civilian Conservation Corps teams arrived at Grand Canyon National Park. To mark that anniversary, the park is holding a symposium recalling the CCC's efforts in the Southwest.

May is a month that looms large in the annals of the Civil War. Battles fought in northern Virginia during that month had major implications for the war’s outcome. Today, visitors can walk the hallowed ground of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and reflect on the deeper meaning of the pivotal events, gallant deeds, and unspeakable suffering that took place there nearly a century and a half ago.

I am in a small gaggle of tourists busily training our armament of camera lenses on goateed mountain goats as they grazed contentedly on wildflower-strewn emerald slopes that rise above Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. The goats are so close and nonchalant they could be models strutting a runway.