Greetings from Far View Lodge in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. It is early in the season and the park’s campground doesn’t open until later in the week. An added bonus of an early visit is a reduced entrance fee; $10 as opposed to $15 during high season.

A federal judge has ruled that the aging Highway 601 bridge over the Congaree River in South Carolina can be replaced without correcting environmentally harmful features of the causeway-like bridge approach built on a floodplain now within Congaree National Park.

Earlier this week we had a spirited discussion of whether the National Park Service needs to add a site to honor Cesar Chavez, who orchestrated the farm labor movement in the 1960s. That discussion nips at a larger question: Has Congress led the Park Service astray and turned it into a catchall agency?

Though few people seem to know or care, Michigan's long-ago abolished Mackinac National Park was America's second national park. Yellowstone got there first, but not by much.