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Great Smoky Mountains National Park

What Ghostly Encounters Might You Have in Harpers Ferry or Great Smoky Mountains?

No doubt there are more than a few national park settings where the ghouls and ghosts might come out this Hallows' Eve. As we previously mentioned, the folks at Voyageurs National Park are planning a flashlight tour with story-telling, and more scary stories are to unfold in Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Friday evening at the Mountain Farm Museum.

Shuttles Make Visiting Cades Cove In Great Smoky Mountains National Park A Bit Easier

If you've ever driven through Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you know how slow that can be due to all the vehicles trying to negotiate the 11-mile loop road. Well, things are going to be a bit easier now thanks to a shuttle service that debuted today.

Trails Forever Program Facilitates High-Priority Trail Improvements at Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Friends of the Smokies created their Trails Forever program to help with high-priority trails projects at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Trails Forever endowment goal is a hefty $4 million. Trails Forever is currently seeking volunteers to help with two major trail projects in the park.

Capturing Fall's Splendor in the National Park System

A few years ago we decided to brave the throngs of visitors and see Virginia’s fall display in Shenandoah National Park (where, ironically, the highest visitation month is October!) and drive the famed Skyline Drive. With the colors at their peak around our home in Pennsylvania, we figured that Shenandoah's forests would be nearing their peak as well.

Conservation Groups Sue to Cut Air Pollution Over Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Whenever talk turns to air pollution and impacts on national parks, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the first parks mentioned. A coalition of conservation groups went to court today with hopes of preventing the park's pollution problems from growing.

Singer Dolly Parton Named Ambassador for Great Smoky Mountains National Park's Anniversary

Dolly Parton grew up in Tennessee not far from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, she's sung My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy, Mule Skinner Blues, My Tennessee Mountain Home, and Tennessee Homesick Blues, so should it be any surprise that the singer has been named ambassador for the park's 75th birthday?

National Park Quiz 22: Angels and Saints

Quiz 10 on July 9 was “Speak of the Devil.” Fair is fair, so this week we’ll turn the focus in the heavenly direction and deal with angels, saints, and such. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you write “The cognitive complexities of the term ‘saint’ render lexical disambiguation extraordinarily challenging” 100 times on the whiteboard.

Cosberella lamaralexanderi, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Most often we look at the obvious in national parks: gorgeous waterfalls or mountain settings, so-called charismatic mega-fauna such as wolves, bears or moose, colorful wildflowers.

But beyond those scenes and subjects there's an amazing world of life. Since the late 1990s biologists have been involved in an All Taxa Biological Inventory at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Designed to inventory all the various forms of life in the park, the inventory to date has discovered nearly 900 life forms new to science and 5,000 new to the park.

Ernest Bernard, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, via Discover Life in America
www.nps.gov/grsm

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