National Park Foundation

The Xplore Adventure Series Toyota FJ Cruiser could be the coolest thing at the campground. The four-wheel -drive SUV is tricked out with off-road tires and upgraded shocks that allow it to scale mountains and ford streams, but it also has a rooftop tent that sleeps two. Tucked away on its roof rack, the tent folds out into a treehouse that's accessible by ladder.  The $30,000+ Xplore FJ with the $2,500 ARB rooftop tent and rack is offered through select Southern  California Toyota dealers.

The Xplore Adventure Series Toyota FJ Cruiser could be the coolest thing at the campground. The four-wheel -drive SUV is tricked out with off-road tires and upgraded shocks that allow it to scale mountains and ford streams, but it also has a rooftop tent that sleeps two. Tucked away on its roof rack, the tent folds out into a treehouse that's accessible by ladder.  The $30,000+ Xplore FJ with the $2,500 ARB rooftop tent and rack is offered through select Southern  California Toyota dealers.

Expedia has joined with the National Park Foundation on a new website to help travelers plan trips to national parks. The site, at www.expedia .com/nationalparks, includes park maps and other content from the National Park Foundation as well as information about lodging outside the parks. It also includes suggestions for long-weekend itineraries and a series of stories called "Can't-Miss National Parks." Although the Expedia site can be used to identify and book accommodations near the parks, it cannot be used to reserve campsites or book stays inside the parks.

Expedia has joined with the National Park Foundation on a new website to help travelers plan trips to national parks. The site, at www.expedia .com/nationalparks, includes park maps and other content from the National Park Foundation as well as information about lodging outside the parks. It also includes suggestions for long-weekend itineraries and a series of stories called "Can't-Miss National Parks." Although the Expedia site can be used to identify and book accommodations near the parks, it cannot be used to reserve campsites or book stays inside the parks.

Final papers were signed closing a deal that will transfer concession operations in Yosemite National Park into the hands of a nonprofit foundation, National Park Service chief James Ridenour announced. Under the complex $61.5-million sale, the National Park Foundation will not formally take over the Yosemite Park & Curry Co. until 1993. The company is currently owned by MCA, owner of Universal Studios.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area has been awarded a three-year environmental education grant of $142,000 to support field study for Los Angeles middle school students at mountain park sites. Officials said the program will be offered to some 4,500 sixth- and seventh-grade pupils as part of the science curriculum of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A widely acclaimed agreement by the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. to sell its hotels and other holdings in Yosemite National Park to the government contained an undisclosed provision awarding nearly $2 million in severance pay to five company executives. U.S. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr.

The Yosemite Park & Curry Co., owner of the hotels, restaurants and stores at Yosemite National Park, will be sold to a nonprofit foundation for a "bargain" $49.5 million under an agreement reached Tuesday between MCA Inc. and the U.S. Interior Department, Interior officials announced. "This is a very good deal," said National Park Service spokesman George Berklacy. Paul Pritchard, president of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., a park watchdog group, called it "a hell of a bargain."

THE LEGACY OF WILDNESS: The Photographs of Robert Glenn Ketchum, preface by Robert Redford, essay by John Perlin. (Aperture: $50; 120 pp.) Here is the first major retrospective of activist/photographer Robert Ketchum, representing 25 years of his astonishing landscape photography. Ketchum was born in Los Angeles, grew up in the Santa Monica Mountains and got an MFA in photography from the California Institute of the Arts.

As a native Californian, life member of the Sierra Club and frequent visitor to Yosemite, I am overjoyed to learn that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. will be selling the Yosemite Park & Curry Co. to the National Park Foundation. As one of our national treasures, Yosemite must forever remain a possession of Americans. However, as an American of Japanese heritage, I am outraged and disgusted by the racist comments by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., regarding the temporary ownership of the YP&C by a Japanese company.

Wendy Carol Roth, a former Los Angeles television producer who turned her advancing multiple sclerosis into an opportunity to help provide all disabled people with greater access to national parks, has died. She was 48. Roth died March 14 in Santa Barbara of complications of the disease she had battled for nearly 30 years, said her husband, film and video editor and photographer Michael Tompane.

BLACK HERITAGE SITES: THE NORTH; BLACK HERITAGE SITES: THE SOUTH by Nancy C. Curtis (The New Press, $19.95 each, paper). Anyone with an interest in American history knows that Memphis' Lorraine Motel is where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968. Today, the Lorraine has been incorporated into the high-tech National Civil Rights Museum. My family and I blew off Graceland to visit it last summer and found it powerfully affecting.

Mother Nature gave Yosemite a severe winter, but it's the accommodation of Mr. and Mrs. America that is likely to make it a troublesome summer. In the aftermath of massive January flooding damage to Yosemite Valley and other parts of California's most-visited national park, Park Service officials are scrambling to devise a system that reopens popular park areas in time for the summer crush, but also limits visitor access. (Yosemite gets more than 4 million visitors a year.

Highlighting his work to protect the environment, President Clinton signed a bill Saturday containing $1.8 billion in federal aid for water cleanup efforts, including a major project in the Florida Everglades and several others in California. In his weekly radio address, Clinton also said he will sign a bill to improve or create about 120 national parks, trails, rivers and historical sites in 41 states.

As Congress pulls the purse strings tighter, the National Park Service is turning to corporate America for funds to refurbish and maintain many of the nation's parks and memorials, including the Washington Monument. Target Department stores recently announced a $1-million donation to help restore the 112-year-old monument and promised a nationwide campaign to raise the $4 million more needed before work on the exterior can begin.

The flood swept through with a ferocity that has already become legend. The Potomac River, which normally tops out at 4 feet at Little Falls, just upstream from Washington, D.C., crested at 22 feet. "I've heard it was the fastest flood in recorded nature," said Paul Rosa, executive director of the Potomac Conservancy, a nonprofit land trust that seeks to preserve undeveloped areas. That may be an exaggeration.

Thousands of Los Angeles middle-school students will troop through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which extends through eastern Ventura County, to study natural resources this year, thanks to a $142,500 grant to regional parks administrators. One of nine grants recently awarded by the National Park Foundation, the funds will support a "laboratory in the parks" program for sixth- and seventh-graders in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Visitors to the Channel Islands National Park center in Ventura will see something new this summer--a live, underwater video of divers cavorting through kelp forests near Anacapa Island, officials said. On a giant television screen at the visitors center in Ventura Harbor, people can watch as two divers point out different types of sea life in a deep kelp bed near the island. Visitors will be able to ask the divers questions using a remote two-way device, park spokeswoman Carol Spears said.

"They're just a bunch of big, old trees," Reggie grumbled. "Can we leave now?" "Boring," Matt agreed. We were walking along a paved trail at Muir Woods National Monument just north of San Francisco looking at the giant redwoods. The towering trees, some more than 200 feet tall and more than 1,000 years old, were spectacular. But just seeing them wasn't enough to keep an active 10-year-old and his 8-year-old sister, Reggie, interested.

Visitors to the Channel Islands National Park center in Ventura will see something new this summer--a live, underwater video of divers cavorting through kelp forests near Anacapa Island, officials said. On a giant television screen at the visitors center in Ventura Harbor, people can watch as two divers point out different types of sea life in a deep kelp bed near the island. Visitors will be able to ask the divers questions using a remote two-way device, park spokeswoman Carol Spears said.