The roadsides, trails and shorelines of our national parks would be a lot less attractive without the hard work of volunteers, park employees and conscientious visitors who pick up litter left by others. Every now and then, however, we learn about someone who has gone the literal "extra mile" many times over to help make a park a better place.

A coalition led by the National Parks Conservation Association and the National Park Hospitality Association is lobbying National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis to increase entrance fees in parks that now charge them, and to expand such fees to parks that don't have them.

Archaelogolists frequently are confronted by mysteries, and that's the case at Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Florida where they're trying to piece together the history of slavery at the Kingsley Plantation.

If there's an icon in the wild kingdom of Grand Teton National Park, it would be No. 399, a venerable grizzly sow known for her prolific breeding and trio of cubs in tow.