Making sense out of National Park System visitation statistics can be tough due to faulty counters, late opening dates, and storms that close parks. All that considered, though, attendance at the parks seems to be up a bit this year through the first six months.

Glacier National Park is often described as a "hiker's paradise," and over 700 miles of trails offer plenty of choices for what the park describes as "adventurous visitors seeking wilderness and solitude." Glacier also offers some fine shorter hikes that offer a taste of the backcountry with only moderate physical demands, and one of the most popular is the combination boat trip/hike to Grinnell Lake.

Three-hundred hikers. Well, not quite 300, but almost, according to Grand Canyon National Park rangers. And they all descended on the park last October 19 in a bid to hike from the North Rim to the South Rim. In one day.

Mountain goats are spectacular animals, even iconic in places such as Glacier National Park, but they can cause problems in parks where they don't belong. At Olympic National Park, where a 1920s era introduction project brought non-native goats into the landscape, officials are embarking on a management plan for how to deal with the animals. Adding weight to the need for such a plan was the fatal goring of a hiker in the park four years ago.