More sunshine, warmer temperatures, longer days, and birdsong at dawn build our excitement for spring. And no one is more joyous than a gardener. Or in this case, the gardeners at the Darrington School Greenhouse in northwestern Washington state.

We all know that Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited park in the United States. In 2021, the Smokies had 14.1 million visitors. Maybe it was a pandemic response and wanting to be outside or just greater appreciation of the outdoors. The bottom line is that there was a 57 percent uptick in visitation in a decade. But the park doesn’t get more money because of increased visitation; that’s not how the National Park Service works.

Spring is here and summer is just around the corner. A number of units within the National Park System are opening their roads, or in some cases, delaying openings.

One is a military site that commemorates the role of the Victoria-Esquimalt fortifications in defending Victoria and the Esquimalt naval base for nearly 80 years. The other was the first permanent lighthouse on Canada’s Pacific coast.