Park visitors occasionally ask rangers, "What do you find to do during the off-season?" There's rarely a shortage of work any time of the year, and a recent series of incidents at Shenandoah National Park offers a reminder that the term "off-season" is often a misnomer.

A major winter storm has created hazardous driving conditions in the three major Appalachian parks. All of Skyline Drive and some sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway have been closed. Great Smoky's Newfound Gap Road is subject to closures at night due to ice.

For most, a national park vacation entails booking a room in a lodge or reserving a spot in a campground, arriving at the park and checking in, and then spending a number of days hiking, paddling, or traveling the park to view various sites, whether they focus on waterfalls, geysers, deep forests, museums, or cultural focal points. Here are some alternatives to that approach, some pricey, some not so.

In a bid to stop the spread of a beetle that could devastate Shenandoah National Park's ash trees, park officials are instituting a ban against firewood brought into the park by campers.