The website for Death Valley National Park accurately describes this vast desert area as "Hottest, Driest, Lowest," and a couple of other superlatives would apply to the park as well. Death Valley is the largest NPS area in the Lower 48 and the park has recently announced completion of a plan to manage the "largest area of designated national park wilderness in the contiguous United States."

A 73-year-old man survived a 115-foot fall over a cliff at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park earlier this week, but his predicament wasn't discovered until the following day. He was successfully rescued by rangers with help from a helicopter just a daylight was fading Tuesday evening.

Thomas Edison National Historical Park preserves the home and laboratory of one of the world's most prolific inventors. Among all his contributions to the modern world, Edison considered the phonograph to be his favorite, so it's especially appropriate that a major collection of antique phonograph records has been donated to the park.

Your ascent to Estes Park, the front door to Rocky Mountain National Park, is anything but smooth. Climbing up through Big Thompson Canyon from Loveland, Colorado, you twist and turn and rise and fall with the road as it crawls through the canyon...and marvel at the cyclists pedaling those beastly 34 miles.