With Spring Break starting for many colleges and universities this week, you're likely to encounter higher than normal crowds for the next week at Zion National Park in Utah. Park staff are anticipating conditions similar to last year’s Spring Break crowds, where parking can fill by 10 a.m., with shuttle bus lines at the visitor center as long as 45 minutes.

Is it appropriate to stage a marathon at a Civil War battlefield site, or is the hallowed setting the wrong place for runners and cheering? That question has surfaced this week as the organizers of the Gettysburg Battlefield Marathon say the National Park Service has denied their request for a permit to stage this year's race.

Last year it was the total eclipse of the sun that created traffic problems in Grand Teton National Park. This summer it will be efforts to prevent future traffic issues in the park that will cause you some stress if you try to rush into the park.

Stratton family lore has my ancestors migrating west on the Oregon Trail. I’m not entirely sure if I believe it, since trail use greatly declined when the Transcontinental Railroad was finished in 1869 and my relatives didn’t arrive in Oregon until the 1880s. But there are accounts of the trail being used through the 1890s, so it is possible. Either way, the Stratton clan ended up in eastern Oregon operating a stagecoach station on the road between John Day and Burns.