When your snowfall through early April is more than 150 percent of normal, you know you've got a long way to go before summer. At Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in the High Sierra of California, that snowpack, and a good number of hazardous trees, means there will be some delays in opening facilities.

With the Interior Department led by a recent oil industry lobbyist and the National Park Service by a past political appointee who overlooked environmental rules to please a billionaire, we're embarking on a new paradigm for managing the National Park System, one that includes changing the rules on the fly.

Here's an enticing offer: If you own vacant land within the boundaries of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, you might be able to swap it for a residential property the National Park Service owns in the Wilsonia Historic District in Kings Canyon.

More than 200,000 children across the country will visit national parks during the 2018-2019 school year thanks to grants from the National Park Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. The grants, supporting 132 national parks, are part of the Foundation’s Open OutDoors for Kids program, which connects young people to national parks through meaningful, educational and engaging activities, and encourages kids to build lifelong connections to these special places.