Every few minutes a bugle call sounded across the empty parade ground at Fort Davis in the rocky hills of west Texas. Every time I heard one, I expected to see John Wayne riding in front of a long column of blue-clad cavalry troopers galloping to rescue me from Apache or Comanche warriors. The morning breeze was gentle and I was the only visitor in sight that early in the morning. It wasn’t hard to let my imagination run for awhile.

I’m willing to bet that right about now there are a lot of Traveler readers who are scratching their heads and asking, “Chamizal? What the heck is a Chamizal?”

One of America’s most quintessential road trips often starts by renting a convertible or RV in South Florida and organizing a tropical journey to the southernmost point in the continental United States. Visitors to this island oasis encounter a lifetime’s worth of natural wonders preserved by our State and National Park Services, along with plenty of fun in the sun, eco-adventures, and an opportunity to disconnect from the real world.

An atmospheric river of moisture took aim on California and the High Sierra over the last few months, dumping snowfall in amounts that haven’t been seen in years. While the state’s multi-year drought isn’t entirely over, the Pineapple Express (as the storms raging in over the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii are referred to) has been hammering California with rain and snow.

Has anyone not heard that the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park is one of the best places on Earth to paddle or float? Or that the New River Gorge National River has one of the best one-day whitewater paddles in the National Park System? If you’ve heard of those, and other iconic paddling spots in the park system, perhaps you are looking for something new, and not so thick with other boats that you’ll slap each other’s paddles. Let us offer you some suggestions, in no specific order.

Spring is a wonderful time to visit Acadia National Park. You’ll find empty parking spots at Acadia’s top destinations, “vacancy” signs at your favorite lodgings, and a more relaxed feel in and around the park as it gears up for the busier seasons of summer and fall.

Horace Kephart roamed the Smoky Mountains in all seasons, but he held springtime here in high esteem.

As soon as we slid the canoe into the river, the current grabbed it and pulled us towards the first rapid on our 26-mile guided trip down the East Branch of the Penobscot in the heart of Maine’s north woods. Now mid-May, it was the perfect time to run the Stream of Light, as the native Abenaki called it, in part because the black flies weren’t yet biting.

They were strangers to each other, collected by common calamity, disfigured, mortally sick, banished without sin from home and friends, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about the Kalaupapa Leper Colony in 1889.

With more than 400 units in the National Park System, trying to zoom in on any one particular park for a visit can be a challenge. Over the past 12 months the Traveler has "explored" quite a few parks, and we list those stories here to help you plan your next national park adventure.

There’s one sure-fire way for avoiding the crowds at Yosemite National Park: visit during the winter. Gone until May are the crowds that fill the Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, and the Mariposa Grove. You’ll love the freedom from take-a-number tourism, and be mesmerized by the pure, clean, quiet whiteness. It just might seem like you have the place all to yourself.

In the early 1800s, following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, a host of scouts, soldiers, trappers and traders began venturing from St. Louis, eager to explore and exploit the natural riches to be found in the wilderness of the West. It was America’s new economic frontier. The expansion of the fur trade would introduce new cultures and trading partners to farsighted business entrepreneurs.

Okay, let’s get the most important thing out of the way right off the bat. If you are thinking of camping using a big RV or even a small camp trailer at Caves Creek Campground not far from Oregon Caves, I have some very important advice: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

Quiet spreads across Big Bend National Park during the winter months, both in the lack of visitors to this grand rumpled slice of parkland in southwestern Texas as well as audibly. Silence pervades the Chihuahuan Desert, both day and night. The wind blows, but it’s felt more than heard. The Chisos Mountains are quiet as well. The cactus and Ocotillo plants look drab and thornier than usual without their brilliant spring blooms to grace and hide the sharp spikes. Cooler temperatures prevail, and occasional snow- or hail-storms punctuate the season.

As I traveled this fall, people I met would ask where I was heading. Whenever I mentioned Lassen in my list, I heard the same refrain from people who had already been there: “You’ll absolutely love it. It’s such a neat and wonderful place.” They were right. I do and it is.

An oddly familiar music greeted me as we pulled up to our reserved site in Gallo Campground, located in a side wing of Chaco Canyon’s buff-colored sandstone cliffs. That sounds like a white-crowned sparrow, I thought as I carried our tent to the 12-foot-square sandbox that would be our sleeping spot for the next four nights. I got out binoculars and, sure enough, there were the telltale white-and-black head stripes that identified it as my favorite mountain songster. But here in the desert? In mid-October? Already this national historical park in New Mexico, which my wife and I and a friend from Albuquerque were visiting for the first time, was surprising me.

Crater Lake sneaks up on you. The mountain holding the lake is just one more of many rather nondescript mounds on the horizon.

I came to Lava Beds expecting . . . . well . . . . lava. But what I found nearly blew what’s left of my little mind. Lava Beds National Monument in north central California near a tiny town called Tule Lake (or Tulelake, it seems to be spelled both ways interchangeably) contains lava all right, and a whole lot more.

It is almost absolutely silent. I sit down on a fallen redwood log and listen. I hear my own breathing. And a woodpecker somewhere far off to my right and what may be some frogs from a direction I can’t pinpoint. A squirrel chitters and a small bird of some kind chips. And all around me are the Trees.

One of my most favorite places on the face of the Earth is Great Basin National Park. It’s one of those Get Out and Do parks, although it certainly has a bunch of stuff for you if you prefer Look and See.