Picture a national park full of towering firs, crystal-clear brooks, an occasional bear cub - and thieves ready to break into your car.
While not a national scourge, the "car clouts," as park rangers call them, can wreck vacations."If you're from Kansas and you see your car window's been smashed and your camera's gone, it will ruin your whole trip," said Major Robert Hines of the U.S. Park Police in Washington.
In the 1980s, authorities broke up a ring of thieves operating along the Cape Cod National Seashore, a string of beaches run by the National Park Service. But others took their place.
"We've probably had eight or nine break-ins since April, and we haven't caught anybody," said Gary Carter, a ranger supervisor at the Cape.
"We don't get a lot of sophistication in car clouts. They smash the window, grab the stuff and high-tail it out of there," said Sgt. Michael Blandford of the park police at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada. One man arrested in Billings, Mont., hoarded thousands of dollars of stolen goods in his trailer home.
"The dummy would keep the IDs of people he had hit," said Pat Ozment, criminal investigator at Yellowstone National Park. "He had cameras, binoculars, all this stuff he hadn't pawned yet."