If you're thinking of visiting Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado yet this year, here's some good news: the park's Far View Lodge has extended its season through October 25.

There’s a sense of place in the West. It flows from endless stands of lodgepole pines, glades of aspen tinged gold by the season, horizons that spread the sky wider than you’ve ever noticed. Spend a little time here, and it seeps into you. It’s the distant bugle of a bull elk, a band of pronghorn darting across the open range, the chortling flock of sandhill cranes, southbound, high overhead. They all fill your senses with the West as it’s always been, as it always should be.

Mid-summer's arrival in western parts of the National Park System have been accompanied by restrictions on campfires in such parks as Sequoia, Mesa Verde, and Yosemite.

Spread out on the fingers of mesas, with visitation greatly restricted, Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado can be a conjested place at times of peak visitation. Knowing that, park officials are embarking on a plan to better handle visitor distribution and transportation in the park.