It can be difficult to absorb the immensity of the ancient trees in Redwood National and State Parks under any circumstance, but doing so from the seat of a car is near-impossible. Fortunately, the coastal California park will offer four opportunities, starting Saturday, for visitors to enjoy the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park without the noise of cars and trucks.

A popular attraction in Washington, D.C. is the World War II Memorial, but the nation's largest memorial to World War II veterans is located on the opposite side of the country—in a unit of Redwood National and State Parks. In 1949, five thousand acres of old-growth redwoods were dedicated as the National Tribute Grove to honor those vets, but over the years that designation had been largely forgotten. That's now changed, and the Grove was rededicated in a ceremony late last month.

Law enforcement agents in California have arrested a man in connection with cutting burls off the trunks of redwood trees in Redwood National and State Parks.

National parks face plenty of challenges from crooks determined to steal everything from cacti at Saguaro National Park to ginseng from the Blue Ridge Parkway, but a growing problem at Redwood National and State Parks takes plant thievery to a whole new level. Poaching of burls from redwood trees is destroying the huge trees, and had led to the nighttime closure of a road in the park