National Park Service

Lytia Solomon had never met a park ranger or taken a family vacation to a national park. And growing up in Philadelphia as a "complete urban city girl," she never knew what a park ranger did. Yet the rising college sophomore with an interest in criminal justice discovered that such a career path could be right up her alley, thanks to a new initiative that's recruiting college students to help combat a looming shortage of National Park Service rangers....

If your heart is set on a national park vacation this summer, now -- not June -- is the time to nail down plans. Majestic Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, for example, reports that its lodging is more than half booked for this summer. California's iconic Yosemite National Park reports heavy bookings as well. It's not uncommon for people to make reservations a year in advance at the most popular parks. Though the National Park Service projects that visits will be down slightly from 2009, these national treasures will still attract a whopping 282 million American and foreign visitors, in part spurred by Ken Burns' 2009 documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."

The National Park Service says some boat ramps and campgrounds along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal remain closed by debris from Potomac River flooding early in the week. Rangers said Friday that nine boat ramps from Spring Gap in Allegany County to Edward's Ferry in Montgomery County are closed. The Antietam Creek and McCoy's Ferry campgrounds are also closed, along with the Billy Goat Trail near Great Falls. Park visitors should expect rough conditions along much of the towpath. - Associated Press

WEVERTON - Sure, it doesn't look like much. But looks deceive. The soon-to-be parking lot along the Appalachian Trail, not far from Harpers Ferry and the Potomac River, is a monument to government gone stupid with our money. How else do you explain a 25-car paved lot that started with a price tag of $187,000 and ballooned to nearly a half-million bucks? But that's what happened when bureaucrats began adding bells and whistles to a slab of asphalt so that visiting Washington "dignitaries" would see a "parklike setting," but nothing so rustic as to dirty their shoes.

The Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland was listed Wednesday by a pair of environmental groups as one of the 25 U.S. National Park Service properties most threatened by the effects of climate change driven by human activity. Stronger coastal storms and predicted sea-level increases of several feet by the end of this century are "virtually certain" to produce breaches and fragmentation of the island, along with losses of habitat for its animal and plant species, according to the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.

Salary: $20,000 Age: 52 Time on the job: 19 months. How he got started: Alan Gephardt began his career working in therapeutic recreation at a nursing home. He later worked at the Baltimore County Department of Aging, managing senior centers among other responsibilities. After several years, he also began volunteering at the former Baltimore City Life Museums. He then went back to school, receiving a master's degree in history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. For the past 15 years, Gephardt has worked in the museum field creating programs and managing volunteers at historical sites such as the Phoenix Shot Tower and Mount Clare Museum House.

Under clear skies on a chilly day recently, workers scaled scaffolding to pound nails into the frame of a two-story entrance porch at the 19th-century Blandair mansion. The task was among the last before the carpenters ceased their efforts for the winter. But after three years of work during the warm months by National Park Service preservation crews, the exterior of the stately house on a 300-acre estate in Columbia looks vastly different than it did in early 2006. Weathered, worn plywood covered many windows, the deteriorated roof leaked onto rotted support beams and the main entrance was a jury-rigged set of wooden steps in 2006.

HAYWARD 'CHUCK' CARBO, 82 Baritone for Spiders quintet Hayward "Chuck" Carbo, whose ultra-smooth baritone fronted the 1950s quintet the Spiders that made the world aware of New Orleans rhythm & blues, has died. Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home said he died last Friday after a long illness. Singer Aaron Neville, a longtime friend, said Mr. Carbo and his brother Leonard "Chick" Carbo were part of the premier New Orleans group in their day. A young Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack produced several 1960s singles by Mr. Carbo and considered him an immense, if underappreciated, talent.

Cambridge - For decades, the people who came to trace the route of the Underground Railroad and the life of Harriet Tubman arrived on tour buses from New York and other urban centers. From black churches and civic groups, pilgrims came to see for themselves how Tubman led slaves to freedom, scooping up dirt from her designated birthplace. Recently, though, more and more visitors - predominantly white - are coming from Maryland's Western Shore to travel the back roads of Dorchester and Caroline counties in search of Tubman's legacy.

PHILADELPHIA -- It's windy. Rain is imminent. The path is muddy. But Patricia Zaradic is loving it all. What's important is that she is out in nature, a place her research tells her fewer and fewer Americans are heading. In the past two decades, park visits, permits for camping or fishing and other data show a pervasive shift away from outdoor activities, the ecologist concludes in a study published recently in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. National parks are still popular; last year, 275 million people visited them.