It’s almost the official start of summer, the weather is warming up and the snow is melting. This means the National Park System is busying itself with construction projects around the parks.
There's quite a bit of news going on in the National Park System. The Memorial Day weekend brought record visitation numbers and the month of June is heating things up for some national parks like Grand Canyon, while others, like Mount Rainier National Park, remain buried beneath several feet of snow in places. With the snow melting, road and bridge maintnenance in and around some park units is starting up, creating delays and closures for visitors. And a huge congratulations goes to Zion National Park for its certification as the latest International Dark Sky Park.
Arches and Canyonlands national parks, and no doubt many other units of the National Park System, are preparing for a busy Memorial Day weekend, and are advising visitors to expect heavy traffic, crowded trails, and limited parking.
“Half the park is after dark.” April 5 – 12 marks International Dark Sky Week 2021, a celebration of the vast, wondrous, starry sky above us. Perhaps you are even planning a visit to a National Park Service unit that's been designated an International Dark Sky Park. This special week also emphasizes how light pollution hampers our ability to see the stars and produces harmful consequences to all living things.
Nightly road closures are coming to the east entrance of Zion National Park in Utah so crews can do maintenance and historic preservation work on the bridges and tunnels of the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway.
A heavily redacted report regarding the search last fall for a missing California woman was released Thursday evening by Zion National Park but offered few details into the ongoing mystery of whether she was actually missing.
The National Park System is full of superlatives: the biggest, the smallest, the longest, the deepest, the rarest, the tallest, and on and on. National Parks Quiz and Trivia #26 takes a look at some of these superlatives while testing your knowledge and teaching you a little something you might not have known.
Climbing routes on cliffs used by nesting peregrine falcons in Zion National Park are temporarily closed into the summer due to the falcons' sensitivity to disturbance during the nesting season.