Following seven years of planning and design, an extensive rehabilitation of the White House Visitor Center in President's Park in Washington gets under way this week.

Six months after a two-day conference on the future of America's national parks, a drive continues to encouarge more groups with ties to the parks to endorse a statement of principles that touches on such diverse topics as economics, natural resource protection, and connecting communities to the parks.

In the aftermath of major fires near Fort Collins and Colorado Springs earlier this summer, smoke rising from a heavily wooded mountainside in Rocky Mountain National Park last week wasn't a welcome sight. Park officials took no chances by promptly attacking the lightning-caused blaze.

Spring blooms are gone in many areas of the National Park System, but they're really showing their true colors at Mount Rainier National Park, where the locals are rallying around "Wildflower Watch 2012."