Summer is a great time to star-gaze, thanks to the normally comfortable night-time temperatures. If you find yourself near Stanton, North Dakota, this week, stop by the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site and you can gain some insights into how Native Americans interpreted what they saw overhead.

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site will host the 31st annual Culture Fest on July 28-29 with a strong list of presenters after traditional skills such as flint knapping and beadwork.

Tucked far north in Montana, hard against the Canadian border, Glacier National Park is a rumpled and craggy masterpiece. Within the park’s 1 million acres rise rustling aspen glades, stands of an unusual evergreen—larch—that loses its needles in winter, even a temperate rainforest of Pacific red cedars, hemlocks and Pacific yew. This is the kingdom of grizzlies and wolves, wolverines and lynx, species that for many exist only in books, magazines, and nature documentaries.

Don't let Africanized bees discourage you from visiting Joshua Tree National Park.