national parks

The married couple were on a permitted, 16-mile hike through the park area known as the Narrows.

It’s March Madness for fans of the lumbering brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve. Already, tens of thousands of votes were cast for Fat Bear Week to find this year’s biggest heavyweight from what the park calls “some of the largest brown bears on Earth.”

After historic floods destroyed roads and nearby homes and pushed out over 10,000 visitors, Yellowstone National Park is set to reopen most entrances within the next two week with limited visitor access.

Created in 1872 as the United States was recovering from the Civil War, Yellowstone was the first of the national parks that came to be referred to as America’s best idea. Now, the home to gushing geysers, thundering waterfalls and some of the country’s most plentiful and diverse wildlife is facing its biggest challenge in decades. Floodwaters this week...

Despite the omicron variant, travelers are making plans to hit the road this year, whether the industry is ready for them or not.

Renee Miller and Tim Beissinger hiked from Mexico to Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic, gaining 1.7 million TikTok followers during the journey.

A Utah national park famed for its otherworldly sandstone arches will require visitors to get timed entry tickets during its high season next year, the second Utah park to implement a such a system as visitation swells.

Work has begun on giving some of America’s most spectacular natural settings and historic icons a makeover

Zion National Park in Utah will soon require reservations to hike a famed trail perched on the edge of a red-rock cliff

The U.S. Senate has unanimously approved the nomination of Charles “Chuck” Sams III as National Park Service director, which will make him the first Native American to lead the agency that oversees more than 131,000 square miles of parks and other landmarks.

Fat Bear Week has come and gone, with a bear known as 480 Otis becoming the most. “Brown bears are hibernators, so they will sometimes go as much as 6 months without eating, drinking, urinating, defecating. And they’re surviving on their fat reserves…they need to eat a year’s worth of food in fewer than 6 months,” says Mike Fitz, a...

Noreen Wredberg, of California, gets to keep the gem she discovered in Crater of Diamonds National Park.

California firefighters are wrapping the bases of several sequoias, including the world’s largest tree, in fireproof aluminum blankets as a blaze approaches.

With American vacationers congregating in many of the same destinations, some travel spots — even well-known ones — have fewer people than usual.

Acadia National Park’s famed Loop Road is back open for 2021, and just in time — people and their cars will begin surging back for peak season in a few weeks. As summer visitors make their return, they may notice a few key differences in their park experience compared to 2020.

DO: have a nature walk and a good time. DO NOT: eat a poisonous mushroom with a rocket fuel ingredient in it.

Watch out if you go mushroom hunting! It may look similar to an edible mushroom, but the “false morel” contains the toxin monomethylhydrazine which is found in rocket fuel. Mycologist Andy Miller from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explains.

The great outdoors has become the great escape during the pandemic.

Face masks are now required in all National Park Service buildings, and on land maintained by the Park Service when physical distancing is not possible, federal officials announced Tuesday.  Visitors and employees must wear masks indoors, plus outdoors on Park Service land when social distancing cannot be maintained, “including [on] narrow or busy trails, overlooks and historic homes,” a...

President-elect Joe Biden has decided on the historic choice of Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico to head the Department of the Interior. The appointment would make her the first Native American Cabinet secretary. But why should we care about the Interior secretary? As NBCLX’s Fernando Hurtado explains, this underappreciated federal agency is more important than you think.