On an uninhabited island off the coast of Southern California where pygmy mammoths once roamed, I trekked along sandstone cliffs and up a steep footpath into one of the rarest native pine forests in the United States. Dwarfed and gnarled by the fierce winds, the endangered evergreens with freakishly large pine cones were so mesmerizing that I almost missed seeing a fox that is found nowhere else on earth.

Utilities and septic systems exposed by the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina have prompted an advisory to visitors to the seashore.

Visitor access and understanding of one of the most historic landscapes in the country will increase with the recent completion of the $6 million Battlefield Tour Road Improvement Project at Saratoga National Historical Park in upstate New York.

Like people have been doing here in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas since the late 1800s, I slip off a white bath sheet and ease into an antique bathtub filled with swirling thermal water. For 20 minutes, I enjoy a therapeutic soak before transferring to a sitz tub in another part of the Buckstaff Bathhouse.