Touring

Quinault Graves Creek Road and campground will reopen Friday, Olympic National Park Superintendent Karen Gustin announced today. The campground will provide typical winter season services, with privy toilets and no running water; flush toilets, and running water will be provided for thesummer season beginning in late March.“We are thankful for the patience and support of the greater Quinault community for restoring access to this area,” Gustin said. “Throughout the project, our goal has been to

The National Park Service says roads leading to the interior of Yellowstone National Park will close to automobile traffic on November 2. Park officials say cars will not be able to travel to places like Old Faithful and Fishing Bridge until the winter snowpack is cleared in the spring. The closure allows the park to prepare for snowmobile and snowcoach traffic, which will be allowed Dec. 15. A handful of roads within the park already have been closed for the season or because of construction.

Mount Rainier National Park got its first full taste of winter earlier this week. While the park has received several dustings of snow already this fall, almost a foot of snow fell at Paradise Monday and Tuesday, according to data from the Paradise weather station. Park visitors need to remember that the road to Paradise is closed each night just past Longmire. It reopens each morning once snowplows have completed removing any new snow.

Sometimes — especially these past couple of colorful weeks — Liz Weintraub forgets she's exercising when she's out hiking the wooded property at the Carl Sandburg Home.Weintraub has been faithfully hiking a three-mile round-trip trail to a mountaintop summit at the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site in Flat Rock for the past four months as part of her fitness routine.

Yellowstone National Park Lodges will offer “Lodging & Learning” packages this winter in Yellowstone National Park. The park’s winter season begins Dec. 18, 2009 with the opening of the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel opens Dec. 21, 2009. The lodges provide the only wintertime accommodations within the park. Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel will close for the season March 8, 2010, and Old Faithful Snow Lodge will close March 7, 2010. 

Weekend vacationers, hunters and traveling tourists be forewarned: Road closure season is here. Several popular high-elevation routes in Rocky Mountain National Park and Roosevelt National Forest are now closed off for the season.In Rocky Mountain National Park, Fall River Road is gated off for the season, park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said.

Park rangers say two popular routes through Yosemite National Park are closed for the second time this month because of snow and icy weather. Tioga Road, the highest elevation route through the Sierra Nevada, closed Monday to all traffic. Glacier Point Road, one of the park's popular sightseeing paths, is also closed as a storm passes through the region. The two scenic roads also closed due to snowfall in the first week of October, and rangers are evaluating whether they will open again this season.

The public will once again be able to view the beauty of Cape Lookout from the top of its historic lighthouse. Funding for repairs to allow the re-opening of the lighthouse was announced Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar during a teleconference with Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina. The news of the funding comes during the ongoing commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the lighthouse.

Recently, a group of 40-plus people gathered in front of the Visitor's Center in Yosemite National Park for a quiet yet much-deserved 10-year anniversary celebration of the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System."When we started 10 years ago, this had never been done," says Vikki Bauer, YARTS chairwoman of the board. "It was a pilot program, and there have been a lot of difficulties. But it has been successful, and we just wanted to celebrate that."

Montana's summer tourism season wasn't as bad as expected - and was far better than in surrounding states and most of the rest of the country. It helped that visitor numbers at the major national parks in Montana soared above those for the 2008 season. Visitation was bolstered by locals vacationing closer to home and by publicity sparked by filmmaker Ken Burns' PBS documentary featuring the nation's parks as "America's Best Idea," said Betsy Baumgart, administrator of the Montana Promotions Division.