National Parks

Four Virginia cities -- Portsmouth, Hampton, Norfolk and Newport News -- have joined forces to offer the year-round African American Heritage program, which features landmarks, festivals and tours celebrating the region's African-American culture and history. Portsmouth offers tours of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1857 by a congregation of slaves and freed blacks, along with September's Umoja Festival, featuring tastes, sights and sounds of African-American culture.

Q: Are there good sources of information on wheelchair accessibility to tourist sites in the United States -- especially national parks -- for someone who does not want to travel as part of a group?A: There are a number of services that supply materials to wheelchair users and direct them to other sources of information, depending on requests.Any of them will direct you to other similar organizations, and to newsletters and other publications specializing in travel for people who use wheelchairs.

When Discovery Cove theme park opens in Orlando, Fla., July 1, it will offer an attraction Disney World and the other area parks can't touch: no crowds and no lines. A sister park to SeaWorld, Discovery Cove will require reservations, and no more than 1,000 guests will be admitted at one time, park officials say. The park's interactive exhibits encourage visitors to swim with dolphins, snorkel among tropical fish, wade with stingrays or feed exotic birds without worrying about time lost waiting in long lines.

ELECTED officials love ribbon-cuttings and groundbreakings. Such events help them get credit for brick-and-mortar victories in the pork barrel free-for-alls that pass for budgeting, especially in Congress. This affinity for the new and flashy explains why a $286 billion transportation bill including nearly 6,400 such pet projects, costing $24 billion, came up more than a third short of the $1.6 billion President Bush requested to repair and maintain the long-neglected national parks. Meanwhile, Congress mustered only one-tenth of the $600 million in additional annual operating funds parks need to pay rangers and other staff.

Richard E. Barrans, a retired chemical engineer and World War II veteran, died Jan. 14 of heart disease at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 86. Mr. Barrans, the son of an electrical engineer and an English teacher, was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The family later lived in LaGrange, Ill., where his father worked for Western Electric Corp., and came to Baltimore in 1930 when his father was assigned to the company's Point Breeze works. The family settled on an 80-acre parcel of property on Providence Road near Towson, which they later developed into a tree farm.

From time to time over the years, President Bush has declared himself a fan of national parks. Now he may be finally about to prove it. In a budget proposal that generally puts a mighty squeeze on domestic programs, Mr. Bush has targeted the long-neglected, down-at-the-heels park system for a major cash infusion - $1 billion over 10 years for operating expenses, including a record $258 million increase for fiscal 2008. Otherwise delighted park advocates are nervous, though, about a key feature of the proposal, which relies on private donors to ante up another $1 billion for special projects and exhibits that the federal government would match dollar for dollar over the decade.

Nature is indifferent to man-made boundaries.The U.S. government, on the other hand, adores them. It carves its hundreds of millions of acres of recreational land into national parks, forests, refuges and other vast holdings that cover much of the country.Lesser-known wilds often share the parkland's famous scenery.Old-growth woods and mountains in the forest service's Citico Creek Wildernesses, for example, are pretty much indistinguishable from the Smokies' best backcountry -- except they're quieter.

WASHINGTON - From a new visitors center in California's Lava Beds National Monument to restoration of New York's Federal Hall National Memorial, the Bush administration is on track to fulfill the president's pledge to fund backlogged maintenance projects in the national park system, park officials say. During the 2000 campaign, President Bush vowed to repair antiquated sewage systems, crumbling buildings and poorly surfaced roads that were marring visitors'...

Sure, you can sit inside glued to the flat screen while Ken Burns drones on about the beauty of national parks ("First, the earth cooled ..."). But it's better to go out and experience Maryland parks the way 11 million people did last year. The State Park Passport is a lot like the "E Ticket" in the early days of Disney. The laminated card costs $75 for residents and $100 for nonresidents, and it allows unlimited day-use for up to 10 people in a vehicle in all parks, forests and wildlife management areas, from Assateague to Deep Creek Lake.