A Dog Survives 34 Days Alone in Yellowstone, Every National Park Waives Its Fee, and Wawa Tries Sushi

Good morning! It's Wednesday, October 21. A family's missing dog walked out of Yellowstone 10 pounds lighter 34 days after she disappeared, every national park in the country is free next Tuesday, and someone brave just taste-tested Wawa's new gas-station sushi, which your RV passenger princess might be ordering on your next pit stop.

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— OK WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING —

> Luna is a 10-year-old Jack Russell terrier, 18 pounds on a good day, and on September 10 she slipped past housekeeping at her family's Canyon Village cabin and vanished into Yellowstone. Anyone who travels with a dog knows the exact feeling in that sentence. Her family searched alone for a week, then a recovery team took over, and for a month Luna was spotted dozens of times and caught exactly zero times: before her family adopted her, she spent her first year as a street dog, and apparently the skills keep.

Last Wednesday, 34 days in and 10 pounds lighter, she was caught alive, days before the search would have shut down for winter. The team never used food to do it. They figured out where she slept each night and built the trap around the one thing a scared dog can't resist. She went straight to a vet, alert and wagging. The searchers' verdict: she'd have made it to spring. Now she won't have to.

— OK BUT A LOT MORE HAPPENED —

> Every national park is free next Tuesday. October 27 is Theodore Roosevelt's birthday, and the Park Service waives entrance fees nationwide for the day. Camping and reservations still cost; the gate itself is the free part. (More)

> The animals that total tow vehicles are getting their own freeway bridge. The world's largest wildlife crossing opens December 2 over 10 lanes of US-101 outside Los Angeles, and Colorado's year-old I-25 crossing already has collisions down 91 percent. (More)

> The famous "optimal road trip" now costs $2,350 in gas. The computed 49-stop route to a top landmark in every lower-48 state ran about $1,300 in 2015. At $4.29 a gallon, the math has nearly doubled. (More)

> History buffs just got a new bucket list. The Park Service named 10 new American WWII Heritage Cities last week, Honolulu to Owensboro, Kentucky. (More)

> South Carolina quietly opened its 51st state park. Ramsey Grove: 2,650 acres and seven miles of trails on the Black River near Georgetown, weekdays 8 to 5. A new park stays uncrowded for about one season. This is that season. (More)

> Campsite cooler rules now apply to your porch pumpkins. Colorado says bring them in by dark: the seeds are a calorie bomb for bears stocking up before denning, and a display that feeds wildlife can mean a $100 ticket. (More)

> National Geographic just told the world where to go in 2027. Four US picks made the 25: Baltimore, Madison, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Coast Highway. (More)

— OK BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS —

> Match the trail to the dog, not the dog to the trip. GearJunkie's new list of the country's top trails for adventurous dogs sorts by the dog, not the view: Pennsylvania's Bushkill Falls passes eight waterfalls in one easy hour, Foster Falls in Tennessee suits every dog on the leash, and New York's Cascade Mountain gains 1,886 feet and is big-dog territory that turns slick in the wet. The catch: most national parks keep dogs off trails entirely, and finding the exceptions is its own trip-planning skill. Here's where dogs can actually go in the parks.

— OK BUT YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GO HERE —

> Watch 6 million bats pour out of a hole in Texas — Devil's Sinkhole near Rocksprings is a 350-foot-deep cavern that empties into the sky at dusk, and the colony peaks right now, at the tail end of the season. Evening tours run Wednesday through Sunday only through October 31, by reservation, caravanning out from the Rocksprings town square. All the Halloween atmosphere you need, zero ghosts required.

> Climb the top of Texas while the canyon turns red — Guadalupe Peak is the state's highest point at 8,751 feet, and below it McKittrick Canyon's maples go scarlet from late October into early November. This is remote West Texas: the only crowds all year are the fall-color weekends, when Pine Springs parking fills by morning. Go midweek and you'll wonder where everyone is.

> Pick your East Coast park by the leaves you can reach — A writer who has been to every East Coast national park just ranked the lot, right as peak color slides south along the Appalachians. Choose by drive time, not by fame. The famous parks have the crowds to match, and the leaf window won't wait for a long weekend that fits.

> Base in Taos while balloons ride the dawn air — New Mexico's high desert does fall quietly: aspens up by the ski valley, galleries and adobe in town, hot-air balloons drifting over the sagebrush on calm mornings. Camp low, day-trip high, and bring layers; 7,000 feet means your coffee steams harder here.

> Drive Vermont's quiet side for four days — The Connecticut River Byway follows US-5 from St. Johnsbury to Brattleboro along Vermont's eastern edge, and it's the un-touristed version of leaf season: a hilltop Dog Chapel at Dog Mountain, a paved road most of the way up 3,144-foot Mount Ascutney, dinner in a restored 1925 dining car in Brattleboro. Eight tables in that dining car. Book it.

— OK BUT DID YOU SEE THIS —

> Of 65,000 entries to this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year, one category winner is Utah's Great Salt Lake, turned flamingo pink.

> The Hudson Valley spends Halloween week renting out its actual ghosts, guide included. Sign up for the haunted walk.

> Illinois shuts down an entire road every fall for snake rush hour, and through October 30 you're invited to be the pedestrian gawking at the commute. Walk it yourself.

> Six Route 66 ghost towns are still standing, and in one of them the wild burros outvote the humans. Go meet your new mayor.

> Seven US cities where Día de los Muertos is the real thing, starting with a river parade in San Antonio.

> A family skipped the pixels and drove the actual Oregon Trail, and their 11-year-old's review made the game feel a lot more real.

> Texas state parks are running Fat Squirrel Week, and the reigning champion is named Chunkosaurus Rex.

> The Mesa Verde gateway town of 1,300 keeps the lights on through the off-season with shared staff, shared customers, and an art market that lands right after Thanksgiving.

> Cuyahoga Valley is the national park where you can leaf-peep from a dome car.

The Dump Station Wawa is test-selling sushi in the Philadelphia suburbs, and the first professional review concluded it tastes like beige had a flavor.

The Odometer $105 million. The largest single private gift in National Park Service history landed in Yellowstone on Monday, including $35 million for a new visitor center at Norris Geyser Basin.

— OK BUT WHO EVEN IS THIS PERSON —

> If those Hudson Valley ghost tours made your Halloween shortlist, here's the valley's own cold case. The river, the bay, and the valley are all named for Henry Hudson, who was last seen in a rowboat.

In 1609, Hudson sailed his ship the Half Moon up the river for the Dutch, hunting a shortcut to Asia. The river, famously, is not a shortcut to Asia. He turned around somewhere past Albany.

Two years later, on a different ship in the ice of James Bay, his crew got tired of the search, the rations, and him. In June 1611 they mutinied and set Hudson, his teenage son, and seven loyal crewmen adrift in a small open boat. None of the nine were ever seen again. The mutineers sailed home, and not one of them was ever punished for it.

So the river got his name. The bay got his name. The valley where you'll be chasing ghosts next week got his name. Hudson got the rowboat.

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