Starting October 1, 2007, the annual fall brown bear hunting season will open for three weeks in Alaska’s Katmai National Preserve. I bet you’re surprised. Brown bear hunting in a national park site?! Yep, here in Alaska national preserves are just like national parks with one exception: sport hunting is allowed. For three weeks in the Fall, hunters may take as many bears as they want.

Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, knew how to heal the wounded, but surfing the web was probably not something she did often, especially considering she died in 1912. Well, fortunately for us, the modern day web surfers of the world, the Park Service has set up a new online exhibit which provides an interactive look at her home in Glenn Echo.

Though much of the news involving national parks and marijuana plantations has been focused on Sequoia National Park, a bust the other day in Yosemite shows that that park has some pretty fertile ground for pot as well.

Generations of Americans got their first taste of national parks via car camping, that venerable tradition of driving to a park and setting up a tent or two in a roadside campground. That genre of park visitation seems to be slipping these days, though, and at least one car camping veteran blames it on economics -- there's more money to be made in lodgings than campgrounds.