In an effort to cut the unemployment rate among veterans, President Barack Obama is calling for a new conservation program that would put veterans to work rebuilding trails, roads and levees on public lands.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the Civilian Conservation Corps that operated during the 1930s could be viewed as a model for what the administration will try to accomplish through its "Veterans Jobs Corps." He said that the administration will propose spending $1 billion over five years that would be used to put an estimated 20,000 veterans to work restoring habitat and eradicating invasive species, among other activities.

The media is discussing the political implications of this jobs program but I see it as a potential win-win for our public lands as well.

It's been an emotional week as we remember Ranger Margaret Anderson, the ranger who was shot and killed by a gunman in Mount Rainier National Park. National Park Service employees are a family. And they all feel the tragedy.

Today is January 8, the day last year that Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot and seriously wounded in Tucson, AZ. And though she's made a tremendous recovery, she has a long way to go. Will she ever be able to run for Congress again? I wrote about my personal connection with January 8 last year and I'm not going to do that again.

So today, I went on the regular Carolina Mountain Club Sunday hike. I expected rain and icicles on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I didn't expect the leader, Mary Beth, to distribute flowers throughout the hike.

Mary Beth had scouted the hike on Friday. At that time, she had tied pink flagging tape around trees. She did that on maybe 10 trees.

Today, she brought a bouquet of roses and greens. As we reached each tree with a piece of pink tape, Mary Beth stuck a flower in it. What was this all about?

Mary Beth explained that she had taken care of a friend who had just died. She was part of a Hospice team at  this woman's home. Mary Beth was understandably still very emotional about the experience. It had been very difficult but it was the right thing to do. So this was a memorial for her friend - on January 8.

And for those who worry about those pink ribbons? She's leading the same hike on Wednesday and will then take them all down.  

This is the time of the year where people make New Year's Resolutions. Most revolve around health and the outdoors.

• Lose weight
• Hike, bike or run more
• Eat better

You know the type of resolution I'm talking about. This is especially true since the media has saturated our minds with health concerns. I don't feel qualified to give anyone health advice but I often get asked about "how to start hiking" or "how I've managed to stay thin". After someone asks, she or he proceeds to tell me about their knee, back, or foot problems. It's hard to then say "just do it".

I'm tempted to just offer two trite but true sayings.

Eat less and exercise more

You can't write a book based on this saying but it works. In town, I don't worry about how far I have to walk to where I'm going. I take the stairs when I can find them - not that easy in many buildings.

I long decided that potato and corn chips, french fries (not served in France) and fluffy birthday cakes are not eatable and I haven't touched those (and many other nonfoods) in decades.

No pain, no gain

Remember Jane Fonda? I do. I exercised to her tapes and the saying makes a lot of sense. If you're new to exercise, you're going to be sore the next day. So what! That just means that you're not exercising enough.

Exercise six days a week. Go to the gym, take a fast-paced walk for an hour. Go on a hike, a real hike. And the following is probably the most controversial thing I say.

Any adult in good health can walk 6 to 8 miles a day - and enjoy it

Join a hiking club. There are hiking clubs all over the world and they welcome beginners. If you live in Western North Carolina, try the Carolina Mountain Club. We're a friendly bunch of people and you don't need to know anyone to come along.

Join Friends of the Smokies and come on our monthly hikes.

I too have some hiking resolutions. I need to ramp up the ascents on my hikes. I've done many near-flat hikes this past year. But in July, I'm taking my granddaughter to Family Nature Summits in Rocky Mountain National Park. It's steep, rocky and at high altitude so I better be prepared.

Happy Hiking Year!

I want to wish everyone a happy hiking year!

If my mission is to get people out of their cars and hiking, it might be a good time to review what I did this year and where I hiked.

My big accomplishment this year was finishing the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. I hiked 500 miles of the MST and completed it in the Outer Banks in May. I wonder what I'll do in 2012 to top that.

Right now, I'm busy writing a book proposal for a travel adventure book on the MST, tentatively called The Mountains-to-Sea Trail: Walking 1000 miles through North Carolina. If you can suggest a better title, I'd love to hear it.

I took the opportunity to visit several National Park Units as I traveled -
the Washington Mall and Arlington House in DC and Manassas National Battlefield when we celebrated Lenny's birthday in Washington,
Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh and Wright Brothers Memorial on the North Carolina Coast as I finished the MST,
Moore's Creek Battlefield on the way to a writing course in New Bern,
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (the St. Louis arch) before taking my granddaughter to  Family Nature Summits in Missouri,
Fort Frederica National Monument, De Soto National Memorial and Timucuan Preserve on our way to Florida.
Not bad. That's 11 parks without any of them being destination places for me. And that doesn't count Great Smoky Mountains National Park, my home park, and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I also hiked on the Appalachian Trail regularly and participated in Virginia 2011, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Biannual Conference.

This year, I started volunteering to lead monthly hikes on the North Carolina side of the Smokies for Friends of the Smokies. The point of these hikes is to show North Carolinians the beauty and accessibility of the NC Smokies. The top picture is of Hannah E. who scouted one of the hikes with me.

I continue to hike and lead hikes for Carolina Mountain Club and do trail maintenance on our section of the Appalachian Trail.

Even though hiking (and writing about hiking) is what I do, Lenny and I took a hiking vacation in England. We walked the Cotswald Way (102 miles) and the Norfolk Coastal Path (47 miles). Very different hiking from the Smokies.

But it's not all hiking. I'm on the Board of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, the cooperating association that runs the bookstores in the Smokies. I write for National Parks Traveler, the best website on all this National Park and for other outlets on the outdoors.

And of course, there's blogging and editing the eNews for Carolina Mountain Club.

I have gotten involved in a couple of non-hiking activities but this is not a family newsletter.

So what's next? Keep reading this blog.   

Sometimes what makes an impression on me is all about the people and not so much about the place I visit.

One more National Park Service Unit to visit on our way back from Florida. We stopped at Fort Caroline, east of Jacksonville. The fort was built in 1564 by a group of French Hughenots looking for a place to settle, for religious freedom but mostly for gold and riches.  They settled on the St. Johns River and tried to get along with the local Indians, the Timucuans.

Things didn't go too well with the Indians. In addition, the Spanish thought that the French were trespassing on their lands and massacred most of them.  The ones that survived left and sped back to France. Nothing is left of the fort or the settlement but again, the NPS does a great job of interpreting.

About a half-mile is the Ribault monument, named for the leader of the settlement. The first monument was erected by the Florida Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the first landing of Protestants on American soil. To the DAR, that was something to celebrate.

Across the street from the Fort is the Theodore Roosevelt Area. It's a large area with trails which was donated by the landowner, Willie Browne in order to preserve the wild nature of the site. We walked the trails and went to the birding platform. A beautiful view.

On the trail, we saw the two rangers above. They had retrieved a sweater that was forgotten by a visitor. "Hey, where's your flat hat?" I asked them.

"Oh no. Now we wear our winter hats." Winter? It was about 65 degrees but it's winter in Florida.

Hernando de Soto was not a very nice man. He brought over 700 men and two women over from Cuba to find gold in America. He was the ultimate entrepreneur, financing his operation himself and doing all the planning.

In 1539,  he landed somewhere in Tampa Bay on the west coast of Florida. He went on a 4,000 mile trek, enslaving native Americans and killing them off when they didn't cooperate. He died a couple of years later and his men buried him in the Mississippi River. So that's the story in a nutshell.

But de Soto gets his own National Park memorial which I had to visit. There is nothing on the site left from de Soto's landing. It was centuries ago. But the Park Service did a great job of interpreting the meaning of de Soto's expedition.

There's a film and a living history area where volunteers show visitors the tools and clothes of the day. So Lenny tried on the chain maille, gauntlet (the metal gloves) and metal helmet. See above.

The site has several thatched huts, known as chickee which means house in Seminole with displays inside.

As usual, when I visit these National Park sites, the hardest information to get is how it all became a national park. The Colonial Dames of America organized to recognize this site but putting a commemorative stone on an Indian burial mound in 1939. It became a NPS site in 1948.

We're driving down to Florida to spend time with Lenny's Mom but we're taking time to see a couple of National Park Service units.

Fort Frederica National Monument on St. Simon Island in Georgia is a small unit in back of a posh island. I wonder how many people who live and vacation in their palacious homes know the battles that ensued here and the community that thrived here in the 1700s.

In the 1700s, Britain and Spain seemed to be fighting constantly. Spain controlled what is now Florida  and tried to move north into Georgia. The Brits tried to move South. South Georgia was "debatable" land. Along came James Edward Oglethorpe who founded Savannah and created a colony for the deserving poor in 1734 here.

They built a fort around the town, which was a replica of an English village. The brick outline of many houses are still on the site. So is the magazine - see above - which stored gunpowder and other equipment. Two battles ensued here between the Brits and Spanish, which were won by the Brits, of course.

After the future of GA was set, the army disbanded and the community died. It took the Colonel Dames of North America to buy up the land and petition the National Park Service to preserve and protect the site. It became a National Monument in 1945.

The site is now a quiet grassy area with several sets of ruins, a museum and lots of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.

The small museum has several tableaus of colonials going about their daily lives, artifacts such as nails, bits of leather and chains.

This is the kind of history I was never taught in school - and if I was, I don't remember. But I'm making up for lost time by spending time in historic parks.

There's so much emphasis around here about buying local. One of the best places to buy "local" is in your National Parks.

Look at the Great Smoky Mountains Association to buy everything Smokies. They publish and carry trail guides such as Hiking Trails of the Smokies, flower and bird guides, and some very specialized books on mushrooms and ferns. But they also have stuffed bears, T-shirts and great hiking shirts.

Eastern National also has National Parks stuff. They are the cooperating association for small parks east of the Mississippi. So if you want something from the Blue Ridge Parkway or a historic park, the chances are that EA carries it. They also publish the National Parks passports. Now that would make a good gift. Look at their online site.

So go and do your Christmas shopping in a National Park.

Are you going to a national park next year?

Are you confused about lodging, hikes and what to bring? Check out the new National Parks Traveler Directory.

OK, I write for NPT and my articles are part of this directory. So in a way, I'm plugging myself. But I write, maybe an article a week, on a good week. I only write about a place or hike when I've actually done it or experienced it. So I limit myself.

But the owner of the website, Kurt Repanshek, is a former journalist and he puts out three to four stories a day - yes, a day, you read it right.

But the beauty is that NPT doesn't limit itself to National Parks. It deals with any and all national park units such as monuments and historic sites. So there's lot of history and local color.

And you can comment on the articles. Comment are moderated so the site gets intelligent, interesting comments. Sometimes the commenters correct the original article.

So keep that link handy.

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/national-parks-directory

And if you're new to NPT, in your comment, tell Kurt that you heard it the website from this blog.

The first to remember about visiting Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is that it is in downtown St. Louis. Lots of people use it as a city park. So when my granddaughter, Hannah, and I got to the arch on a hot Sunday afternoon, the visitor center was crowded.

After flying to St. Louis on the way to Family Nature Summit, we jumped on their amazing Metro city and rode to the Arch. When you're standing under it and look up to the stainless steel arch, it beats all the pictures you've seen of it. At 630 ft., it is the largest built structure in the U.S.

It's on the banks of the Mississippi River and represents America's westward expansion. In particular, it celebrates the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) which started here and took them on the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. There's surprisingly little about the two explorers in the Museum of Western Expansion.

We really should have had a day to explore the whole site, instead of a short afternoon, but we took in a lot. We went in the Old Courthouse, a county courthouse where Dred Scott and his wife sued for their freedom in 1846. The case when up to the Supreme Court but they lost. Beautiful building which would be worth a trip on its own.

The Museum of Western Expansion is an open-plan museum which goes from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to the 1890s, the end of the frontier.

But the whole point of the visit was to go up to the arch on a 4-minute train. We had reservations for 4:30, which is when we got on line.

An hour later, we finally got on the capsule with 3 other people and went up. Hannah had no trouble with the wait since she made friends with two girls in back of her, standing in line with their grandparents.

The top was crowded but we saw out of both sides of the arch through tiny windows.Here's a picture looking down to the Courthouse.

And another of Hannah under a sign.

National Park units are hidden every place. I set myself a minor goal to visit all the units in North Carolina. So on my way to New Bern, I took a detour to Moores Creek National Battlefield. 

It was about 103 deg. according to my car thermometer when I arrived at the battlefield outside of Currie, in the North Carolina sandhills, about 20 miles west of Wilmington.

I knew I was on the right track when I reached Gen. Howe highway, NC 11. Gen Howe was the commander of the British forces in America during the American Revolution.

Moores Creek is a small park, about 88 acres but it makes the most to attract folks to this out-of-the-way park. Moores Creek commemorates a 3-minute battle (no typo here, three minutes) between the Loyalists and the Patriots on Feb. 27, 1776.

Loyalists marched to join the British who were going to sail into Wilmington harbor but to do that, they had to cross Moores Creek. They were arrogant enough to offer to pardon the renegades, the Patriots, and offered them an ultimatum. Disband and you'll be all right.

"No," said the Patriots and the next morning they set a trap for the Loyalists.

Over 30 Loyalists died and one Patriot. The one Patriot got his own memorial, shown to the left.

The mile-long History Trail has six memorials and a couple of cannons. And of course, you get to walk across a reconstructed bridge over Moores Creek.

There's also a memorial to two locals (shown to the left) and one to the Loyalists. That shows that we're so over the American Revolution. We're all friends now.

Larry, a volunteer at the Battlefield, wears a dark green polo shirt with the NPS Volunteers-in-the-Parks patch. I've never seen this VIP uniform so I took his picture.

So was it worth the detour? If you're into the American Revolution or into NPS sites, of course.