In an ideal world, those of us on a trip to a park could take off our watches, never glance at the time on our electronic devices, and not even care what day of the week it is, much less the hour of the day. That's unfortunately not always the case, of course, so it's important to know there are some parks where the answer to "What time is it?" may not be what you expect.

Keeping quagga mussels in, not out of, Lake Powell at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is the new strategy after years of trying to prevent the non-native species' spread into the reservoir have been declared a failure.

“Running on empty” unfortunately is a very apt description of the Colorado River Basin, which long has had its water overcommitted. Today, the vast watershed that stretches from the mountains of Colorado to the Gulf of California and helps nourish some 30 million residents in the Southwest and Mexico is mired in a long-running drought that threatens to dramatically recast the already-arid region.

Castle Rock Cut is a popular short-cut route on Lake Powell that allows boaters to shorten the trip between the major Wahweap Marina and destinations uplake by a distance of 12 miles. Years of drought and falling water levels for the lake have made this shortcut unusable by boaters, so work is getting underway at to lower this channel by another twenty feet.