A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away … Stargazing at Arches National Park is out of this world. On a moonless night, you can see a wealth of stars with the naked eye. Happy May the 4th be with you! Photo of Delicate Arch courtesy of Joshua Snow.
Happy Star Wars day! May the 4th be with you!
Happy National Public Lands Day – the nation’s largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands. Today and everyday, celebrate the beautiful landscapes, history and wildlife that public lands protect. Whether you spend the day volunteering or recreating, it’s the perfect day visit a public land near you. Photo of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia by National Park Service.
It’s National Wildflower Week! Of all the unique and colorful wildflowers on public lands, few are as fascinating as the Cahaba lily. A rare type of spiderlily with striking 3-inch white flowers, the Cahaba lily requires a specialized habitat of swift water flowing over rocks with lots of sunlight. Cahaba lilies bloom from mid-May to mid-June (or Mother’s Day to Father’s Day). The best and largest populations are located at Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama. Photo by Keith Boseman (www.sharetheexperience.org).
Tomorrow is National Hunting and Fishing Day. Held every year since 1972, National Hunting and Fishing Day celebrates outdoor sports, and how hunters and anglers contribute to conservation. Whether you are a first-timer or a seasoned sportsman or woman, your public lands are some of the best places to wet a line or bag the big one. Just ask the people at Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi, a very popular place for outdoor sports. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Wildflowers and epic views make Wyoming’s Carter Mountain an amazing summer spot. Located southwest of Cody, the area is composed of a mix of private lands and public lands managed by the Bureaus of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. While there are various ways the public can access Carter Mountain, the best way is from the north, via the Carter Mountain Road off the Southfork Highway west of Cody. Photo by Gretchen Hurley, Bureau of Land Management.
It’s the first day of Fall! We hope you’re looking forward to the cooler nights and changing colors as much as we are. On public lands across the country, summer green will transition to lovely shades of orange, red and gold with northern latitudes and higher elevations changing first. Fans of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee will get to enjoy scenes like this soon. Plan your visit now. Photo from last year by Max Foster (www.sharetheexperience.org).
For many public lands, one visit is never enough. Photographer Dawn Demaske made several summer trips to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, but hadn’t seen a winter sunrise until recently. Setting up near the park’s signature rock formations, Dawn watched the sky lighten. “The sunrise was spectacular and it was everything I wished it would be. I felt very fortunate to be there at that moment and I took it all in.” Photo courtesy of Dawn Demaske.
Today is International Owl Awareness Day, a day that’s especially important because owls are fantastic at disguise — making awareness of them challenging. Fierce hunters, owls fly silently and have excellent hearing and eyesight. There are 19 species of owls found in North America and plenty of opportunities to spot these birds on public lands or in your backyard.
Burrowing owl (owl in the photo) awareness facts:
- They hiss when frightened to mimic a snake
- They will sometimes decorate their burrows with dung to attract their favorite food, dung beetles
- Sometimes they dig their own burrows and sometimes they’ll use the burrows dug by other animals like tortoises or prairie dogs.
Whoo has seen an owl on a national park, national wildlife refuge or any other public lands? We want to know!
Photo of a burrowing owl at Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge in California by Sarah Chan (www.sharetheexperience.org).
There is so much to discover on public lands. Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is the second largest wilderness area in Arizona. A campaign by the Arizona Boy Scouts helped establish the refuge in 1939 to protect desert bighorn sheep and other wildlife. The refuge’s name – Kofa – comes from an acronym for one of the area’s most notable mines, the King of Arizona gold mine. Photo by Rebecca Wilks (www.sharetheexperience.org).
Is it just us or does it look like these sunrise clouds are getting ready to fight? The forces of nature are powerful indeed, and the rugged landscape of City of Rocks National Reserve in Idaho is testament to more than two billion years of geologic upheaval. Faults stretch, mountains rise, ranges extend and wind and rain scour and smooth everything. The park’s unusual rock formations tell these ancient stories, leaving room for future tales under the ever-changing sky. Photo by National Park Service.
Some of the wildest and most remote land in Oregon, Steens Mountain Wilderness covers more than 170,000 acres of rugged beauty. The area offers an extraordinary landscape of volcanic uplifts, deep glacier-carved gorges, stunning scenery, rushing rivers and rich diversity of plant and animal species. Popular activities include camping, picnicking, nature photography, hunting, fishing and exploring the open country on foot and horseback. Photo by Bureau of Land Management.
