Recently a friend wrote to ask where I was spending the winter and when I replied, "Yellowstone," they appeared to be dumbfounded.

There will be nine admission-free days to the National Park System in 2014, though just one falls during the peak vacation months of summer.

They're barebones, rustic, Spartan -- choose your adjective -- but the sea-front cabins at Cape Lookout National Seashore are great basecamps if you like to surfcast or simply looking to spend some down time on a decidedly low key seashore.

The path-breaking beginning of America’s national parks in Yosemite is the subject of these two anniversary-related books. For Dayton Duncan, in Seed of the Future, the Yosemite Grant remains the story of a national triumph. For Jen Huntley, in The Making of Yosemite, the act of June 30, 1864, bears irrefutable evidence of a national theft.