Uh-oh, this doesn’t look good. A kayaker is careening down the narrow winding river, letting the current pull her towards danger instead of paddling like mad away from it. “Stay hard right,” shouts Hailey Albers. “Stay away from that root wad.” Whooping and hollering, the woman rather gleefully crashes right into a partially submerged tangle of tree roots.

There is, near the roof of Rocky Mountain National Park, a unique landscape rarely found in the National Park System.

To be honest, I have no clue what I’m looking at beyond the fact that it’s a key object in the World War II-era race to develop the world’s first atomic weapons before Nazi Germany. There is a giant wall full of holes that reminds me of a Lite-Brite toy, mannequin men with rods and a legend that talks about donut, iodine and uranium fuel slugs.

Every seven seconds we hear it — the long, drawn out “hooooooo” of one of the world’s rarest birds. The Grenada Dove may be shy, elusive and critically endangered, but it’s cooing its heart out on this drizzly day in the Caribbean.

Floyd Collins entered Sand Cave a century ago today to explore its prospects as a visitor site and became trapped in a passageway not much wider than his chest, dislodging a 27-pound rock that pinned his leg.

“Are you a birder?” the woman asked from the front seat of her pickup truck in the parking lot of a Newfoundland national park on New Year’s Eve.

Despite the iconic image of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad that was sealed with a golden spike hammered into a laurel railroad tie, the closing weeks of the engineering feat were frenzied.

There is little chance you'll overlook an elephant seal on the beaches of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Slumbering beneath the streets of San Francisco is a veritable fleet of 19th century vessels that carried gold seekers to California.

It's still a bit early to predict what winter might throw at the National Park System, but if you enjoy snow and cold here's an overview of some of the parks you should consider visiting.

George Masa, a slender Japanese man with a big grin who hiked throughout the mountains of western North Carolina and east Tennessee in the 1920s and early 1930s, left behind a remarkable photographic chronicle of the landscape soon to become Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

On a rocky slope in Torngat Mountains National Park in northern Labrador, a lone polar bear was splayed out on his belly on a bed of Arctic plants. He looked like a bearskin rug until he rolled lazily onto his side, lifted his head and yawned.

The recent eruption at Nāpau Crater was the first on Kīlauea’s middle East Rift Zone (ERZ) in six years. We often remember the Pu‘u‘ō‘ō and Maunaulu eruptions when thinking about the middle East Rift Zone, but many lesser-known eruptions occurred on the rift zone in the past 200 years, including 11 during the 1960s!

“SPECIAL,” read the pink card tucked into the archival box with JODA 17384.

The Pear Lake Hut in the backcountry of Sequoia National Park in California doesn't open for the winter until mid-December, but you can start planning your trek by trying to land a reservation in the hut.

Although not as famous as Old Faithful Geyser or Grand Prismatic Spring, the features of West Thumb Geyser Basin are some of the most varied and beautiful in Yellowstone National Park. From hot pools to offshore hot springs to sinter terraces to submarine explosion craters, West Thumb is an exciting natural laboratory!

Long before airways, highways, and even railways crisscrossed the country, rivers – our great waterways – were used regularly to transport goods and passengers.

It has been said that “a room full of Monterey furniture always seems to have a sense of humor about it.” The pieces in this storage room in Grants Pass, Oregon are clearly having a grand old time while off-duty and jammed into their temporary home.

Despite the iconic image of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad that was sealed with a golden spike hammered into a laurel railroad tie, the closing weeks of the engineering feat were frenzied.

If you're ever forced to hike through lion country the first rule is that you should never travel at night. Lions hunt at night.