One-hundred-and-fifty years ago naval warfare history was marked when a Confederate submarine used a torpedo to sink the USS Housatonic in the waters near Fort Sumter. While that didn't mark a turning point in the Civil War, it did advance naval warfare.

You can float the Colorado River at Grand Canyon National Park on either private or commercial trips, but if you hope to get a permit for a longer noncommercial river trip in 2015, now's the time to submit your application. The annual lottery for such permits is open through February 25, 2014.

Many of us have some occasional moments of nostalgia—or perhaps just a bit of curiosity—about life in our parks during what we presume was a less frantic world a generation or two ago. If that's the case, and you'd like to get a peek at life as a ranger and his spouse in Yosemite and several other western national parks in the 1930s and 1940s, you'll likely enjoy reading a book that's a park's classic: Bears in my Kitchen.

Starting in 1922 as a type-written news sheet, Yosemite Nature Notes the periodical went on to become a charming magazine with more than 400 issues during its 40 years of publication.