Contributing writer Rita Beamish and a friend headed out on the John Muir Trail for nine days in August to escape the coronavirus pandemic, and while they carried face masks and practiced social distancing, not everyone they encountered did.

A couple of backpackers are planning to embark next month on hiking the 900 miles of trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a bid to raise $60,000 for Friends of the Smokies, with the money going to the park’s Preventative Search and Rescue program.

With ongoing drought and hot, dry, windy weather conducive to wildfires, Rocky Mountain National Park officials are banning campfires inside the park.

The long-closed, and recently restored, Bluffs Restaurant on the Blue Ridge Parkway will reopen for business on August 22.