There are more stories to be found in the National Park System than one could write in a lifetime. Or several lifetimes.

Sometimes those stories can be hard to spot. How many were aware of the factoid from Great Smoky Mountains National Park that Jennifer Bain dug up, that if you stacked up all of the park’s salamanders against its roughly 1,900 black bears, the salamanders would weigh more?

Talk about national park trivia.

We’re going to talk about stories in the parks today with Kim O’Connell and Rita Beamish, two long-tenured writers for the Traveler. The ones they’re currently working on are pretty interesting.