This year's coronavirus pandemic has challenged the National Park Service in myriad ways, forcing some managers to limit visitation through reservations, while most if not all have had to learn how to manage visitors and resources with staff limitations. At Crater Lake National Park, it has meant educating visitors that they can't turn the woods into bathrooms and that paddle boarding is not allowed on big blue.

The Bluffs Restaurant at Doughton Park, closed for the past decade, reopens Saturday on the Blue Ridge Parkway. On opening day, the restaurant will welcome guests for special hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. as originally announced, and then shift to a schedule of 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

In this skillet hot and talc dry summer of 2020 in the Intermountain West, worries over wildfires are spurring a strong measure of caution. That was evident Tuesday at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, where officials closed a section of the park due to a fire outside of the park's boundaries.

A flareup of Covid-19 in the U.S. Virgin Islands has prompted the territory's governor to ban leisure travel for 30 days, an order likely to throw a wrench into plans to visit Virgin Islands National Park in the coming weeks.