National Parks Traveler is the world's top-rated, editorially independent, nonprofit media organization dedicated to covering national parks and protected areas on a daily basis. Traveler offers readers and listeners a unique multimedia blend of news, feature content, debate, and discussion all tied to national parks and protected areas.
National Parks Traveler Podcast
The past year has been a trying one for the National Park Service, and for many of the units in the National Park System. For the agency, employee morale continued to be a major issue as housing, pay, and leadership remained sore spots for many who worked for the Service.
On the ground, climate change continued to impact parks, from sea level rise and more potent storms, to wildfires, and hotter and dryer conditions that adversely affected vegetation, wildlife, and facilities.
Who wouldn’t like to visit a tropical paradise? Virgin Islands National Park in the Caribbean is one such paradise. It resides on the island of St. John, and features beaches sparkling white and lined with palm trees and other tropical vegetation. Those beaches are washed by warm, turquoise waters that provide habitat for sea turtles the size of trunks, colorful fishes like blue tang and parrot fish, and even menacing barracuda.
When Kurt Repanshek launched the Traveler back in August of 2005, it was primarily to find stories that he could pitch to magazines. But the magazine world took a nosedive, while at the same time readership on the Traveler continued to grow.
It’s been six years since an oil company headed out across the marl prairie of Big Cypress National Preserve with vehicles weighing as much as 30 tons to search for oil reserves. Signs of that work continue to show on the prairie, despite stringent National Park Service requirements for restoring the landscape after the searching was completed.
Utah has five spectacular national parks, and Arches is one of them. It’s a relatively small park. The scenic drive is only 18 miles long, ending at the Devil’s Garden area, but you’ll have incredible views of the reddish rockscape the entire way right from your vehicle.
Throughout history the barrier islands that today are home to Cape Hatteras National Seashore have been attractive to wildlife. A variety of sea turtle species come ashore to lay their nests, and a variety of shorebirds settle there, too, to lay their eggs.
But the thing with wildlife nesting on the beaches of Cape Hatteras is that one great season can be followed by a poor one. Influencing the outcome can be human disturbances, storms, and predation.
It was just over a month ago when the federal government was staring at the possibility of a shutdown. Well, little seemingly has changed in the ensuing four weeks, other than that the House of Representatives has a new speaker in Mike Johnson from Louisiana, and the full chamber has settled on its budget numbers for fiscal 2024…which started back on October 1.
When a young park ranger was asked by his supervisor to clean out an old barn at Grand Teton National Park in the early 1970s, he discovered a dusty and stained blue, grey, and green poster inviting folks to “Meet the Ranger Naturalist at Jenny Lake Museum". This young ranger, Doug Leen, soon discovered that it was one in a series of posters created by the Works Progress Administration to put artists to work and promote visitation to the national parks during the late 1930s.
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The Essential RVing Guide
The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.
This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.
You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.
So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.
