Winter, the season with cold, snow, short days and long nights, can be a challenging season to explore the National Park System. Yet it also holds surprises that reveal themselves in shimmering lights darting across the night sky, in tracks of what passed the night before across the snowscape, and in congregations of wildlife.

Researchers are trying to determine why some mature sequoia trees in Sequoia and Yosemite national parks have died.

In Three Rivers, California, a historically white census-designated place, too small even to be incorporated as a town, a brewer is redefining multicultural dining so his beer hall on the doorstep to Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks can survive the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the National Park Service, there are over 5,000 miles of paved roads through the National Park System. Park roads (paved or unpaved) allow us to reach amazing vistas we might not otherwise see within a national park, national monument, or national recreation area. These roads are marvels of construction and merit a nod of appreciation to those builders who may have risked life and limb to ensure completion of that navigable ribbon of gravel or pavement. How many of these roads have you traveled, what have you seen and accessed via these roads, and how much do you know about them?