A 4,000-acre fire burning to the west of Yosemite National Park brought smoke into the park and led to backups at the park's South and Big Oak Flat entrances, but otherwise the park was operating normally Sunday, according to staff.

More than 50 years after the National Park Service's last major investment in park infrastructure, many wastewater and sewer systems across the park system are either failing or being held together by ingenuity and today's version of bailing wire and tape while park managers wait for Congress to fund their needs.

Nothing worthwhile is ever easily attained, but now, after three years of closure, you can return to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park and marvel not only at the big trees but also the reinvigorated grove.

For eight years, families whose memories of the Blue Ridge Parkway were nurtured around summer evenings chasing fireflies on the rolling highland meadows below Bluffs Lodge at Milepost 241 have wondered when it might reopen. But a question that might better be asked of the charming 24-room lodge that opened in 1949 is whether it ever will be able to reopen or instead be razed.