Big Bend NP:
Big Bend's rugged beauty is a winter draw
Late fall and winter are the best time of year in the rugged desert land of Big Bend National Park. Moderate weather — the average daytime high temperature in December is a comfortable 70 degrees at park headquarters — allows exploration of the area’s often-sizzling lower elevations.
http://www.star-telegram.com/living/story/1102560.html

Death Valley
Death Valley Park struggling to keep its sky black
Light pollution from far-away Las Vegas now intrudes
High atop Dante's View, overlooking sheets of salt flats and ribbons of sand dunes, night watcher Dan Duriscoe shone a laser beam at the North Star and steadied his digital camera at the starry heavens.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08356/936372-113.stm

Great Smoky NP:
Gatlinburg: Gateway to the Smoky Mountains
When the widow Martha Jane Huskey Ogle and her extended family arrived at the foot of east Tennessee's Smoky Mountains in the early days of the 19th century, things looked a little different. The majestic, verdant mountains, cut by numerous clearwater, boulder-strewn streams, and the host of wildlife living there were still the same, but the town of Gatlinburg was nonexistent.
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/travel/12/21/1221gatlinburg.html


When the name Ken Salazar comes up, most Americans would offer one response:
Who?
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200881218055

Misc. Parks News:
Bush Hearts Mountain Biking, Lifts Restrictions in National Parks
On Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty ordered the National Park Service to ease existing mountain biking restrictions, possibly opening nearly eight million acres of recommended or proposed wilderness lands in approximately 30 parks to mountain biking.
http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/12/20/bu...national-parks/

Settling in: From subsistence farming to hopes for a national park
In the late 1780s, John Jacob Mingus and his family moved into Oconaluftee, a North Carolina valley that had been Cherokee territory for thousands of years. Among the first known white settlers of the area that would become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Mingus became a prosperous farmer and miller.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/21/122108smokies/

National parks still await tourist boom
You might think that fewer airline flights and higher air fares would mean more Americans taking road trips to the national parks.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08356/936137-37.stm