Our friends at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are currently running a fan favorite photo contest on their Facebook page. This photo of Aster Lake by Scott Toste is one of the favorites. To vote, click here.

On this date 204 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin similar to this one. For over a century people from around the world have come to rural Central Kentucky to honor the humble beginnings of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.  His early life on Kentucky’s frontier shaped his character and prepared him to lead the nation through Civil War.  The country’s first memorial to Lincoln, built with donations from young and old, enshrines the symbolic birthplace cabin. 

Photo: National Park Service

A cool-blue snowstorm approaches the distant shadow of Balanced Rock, as viewed from the top of the Fiery Furnace fins yesterday evening in Arches National Park. We woke up to two (more!) inches of powder this morning.

Photo: National Park Service

Loggerhead sea turtles are currently listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Several wildlife refuges in the southeast United States have programs to help the Loggerhead recover to more sustainable numbers, so in the future, more of these little guys will be venturing out into the sea very soon.

Photo: Ben Hicks

Keith Ramos took this stellar photo of the Arora Borealis over the Nowitna River in the Nowitna National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This photo was submitted to the 2012 National Wildlife Refuge Association photo contest. To see more entries, click here.

Yosemite National Park is just as beautiful in the winter as it is in warmer months.

Photo: National Park Service

A Laysan albatross known as “Wisdom” – believed to be the oldest wild bird in the World at least 62 years old – has hatched a chick on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge for the sixth consecutive year. Early Sunday morning, February 3, 2013, the chick was observed pecking its way into the world by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Pete Leary, who said the chick appears healthy. Wisdom was first banded in 1956, when she was incubating an egg in the same area of the refuge. She was at least five years old at the time. 

Learn more about this cool story here: http://www.facebook.com/Papahanaumokuakea

Photo: Pete Leary - USFWS

Big enough to be overwhelming, still intimate enough to feel the pulse of time, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park exposes you to some of the steepest cliffs, oldest rock, and craggiest spires in North America. With two million years to work, the Gunnison River, along with the forces of weathering, has sculpted this vertical wilderness of rock, water, and sky.

Photo: National Park Service

The distant mountains, as seen here from the Continental Divide, are the Absaroka Mountains which border the eastern side of Yellowstone National Park.

Photo: National Park Service

One of the most #spectacular areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has to be the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah, which spans nearly 1.9 million acres of America’s public lands. From its awe-inspiring Grand Staircase of cliffs and terraces, across the rugged Kaiparowits Plateau, to the wonders of the Escalante River Canyons, the Monument’s size, resources, and remote character provide extraordinary opportunities for geologists, paleontologists, archeologists, historians, and biologists in scientific research, education, and exploration.

Photo: Bob Wick, BLM