Fall draws crowds to national parks

National parks aren’t just summer destinations. Many parks see significant visitation well into the fall, offering everything from wildlife to fall foliage to cooler temperatures.

The most popular national park destinations for fall include the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the Southeast, according to the National Park Service’s online database.

The Blue Ridge Parkway got 1.8 million visitors last month and 1.9 million visitors in October 2014, while the Smokies saw 1.3 million visitors last October and a million last month.

But a number of parks in the Western U.S. typically receive hundreds of thousands of visitors in the fall as well.

Grand Canyon saw nearly 411,000 visitors last October and more than 480,000 this September.

Chrysanthemum festival to begin

HARTFORD, Conn. >> Longwood Gardens’ annual chrysanthemum festival began Saturday and runs through Nov. 22. It includes what the garden calls “the largest chrysanthemum in the Western world.”

It’s Longwood’s “thousand-bloom chrysanthemum,” which the garden says is the largest mum grown outside out of Asia, with more than 1,500 flowers on one plant.

The festival overall features more than 16,000 chrysanthemums groomed and trained into a variety of shapes and forms, from balls and spirals to cascades.

The garden is in Kennett Square, Pa. Details at longwoodgardens.org.

Nature center backs social justice

NEW CANAAN, Conn. >> Grace Farms, a new center for nature, arts and faith has opened on 80 acres of woodlands in rural Connecticut.

Its centerpiece is a long, narrow building known as the River because of its resemblance to water coursing through the onetime farmland. The serpentine building, designed by the Japanese studio SANAA, fits in with New Canaan’s reputation as the site of noted buildings designed by architects such as Philip Johnson, Marcel Breuer and Edward Durell Stone.

But Grace Farms, which required nearly $42 million to buy the land and $67 million for the building and related work, is more than an architectural attraction.

It is also dedicated to the arts and social justice. The site will be collaborating with visiting artists and nonprofits that need program space, with emphasis on fighting human trafficking.

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