Editor’s note: Throughout the fall there are numerous reasons to visit national parks. Here’s a look at some of those excuses…if you really need one! For more details on a specific event, check the individual park’s website.

No one really needs an excuse to visit a national park in the fall, one of the most glorious seasons across the National Park System.

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Editor’s note: Fall is arguably the best time to see, and hear, wildlife in the national parks. From elk bugling in the Rockies — and even the Appalachians — to bird migrations, your options are many for pairing wildlife and a fall park visit, as Contributing writer Danny Bernstein explains.

In the fall, animals and birds prepare for winter.

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Glance at a map of the Eastern Seaboard and a number of intriguing national parks jump out: Acadia National Park, Shenandoah National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Everglades National Park.

But which one to visit?

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A series of inexpensive folding pocket guides can help you easily identify some of the nature you see in national parks.

Published by Waterford Press, these Pocket Naturalist Guides (MSRP $5.95) are slim enough to slip into your back pocket or daypack yet unfold to display six two-sides pages (12 panels, overall) crammed with colorful illustrations and brief descript

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We gave you these clues and challenged you to identify Mystery Plant 10:

• You do it with a hand auger, and I don’t mean drill.

• You don’t expect a man of that caliber to be so dull.

• That’s a lie!

• Heaven for the climate, hell for society.

You were also given a bonus clue (no extra charge):

• Pushing up daisies is not a doctor-approved form of exercise.

Here is how to pu

Glacier National Park has its Red Jammers, Yellowstone National Park has its National Park Buses, and now Crater Lake National Park has its trolleys.

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Three days might not qualify for official “vacation” status, but the First Family’s trip this weekend to Acadia National Park should provide enough time for President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their kids to sample some of the highlights of this Down East treasure.

While there are no public events sc

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There’s a new structure showing up this summer in campgrounds bordering national parks, one that offers a higher level of comfort than the typical family camper or pop-up tent.

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The darkest skies I’ve enjoyed have been overhead in national parks. Winter nights in Yellowstone National Park so cold and so dry that stars seem almost within reach. At Natural Bridges National Monument, the Milky Way forms a horizon-to-horizon band over the landscape.

Falling asleep to the star show over Canyonlands National Park. Waking in Glacier National Park to the mirror-like surface of Swiftcurrent Lake with its embracing mountains towering overhead. Listening to the laughter of children mixing with the pounding surf at the Blackwoods Campground at Acadia National Park.

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