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National Park Week: April 21 through 29

Tonight, my wife and I watched another bit of the documentary, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” We have made it through the year 1933. Throughout, we have been impressed by the seemingly eternal struggle between those who want to claim national lands for their own use, developing them for their own financial benefit, and those who want to protect the lands for The People and future generations. Through it all, I recognized that we have now entered National Park Week for 2012.

During National Park Week, the parks will have special programming, and the parks that charge admission will WAIVE those admission costs! For popular parks like Yosemite, the savings can be substantial, considering the cost of gasoline that you have already spent to get there. There are many less-visited National Parks as well. One of them in California is Lassen Volcanic National Park, which sometimes ranks as the least-visited National Park in the U.S. We once camped at the Manzanita Lake campground at Mount Lassen, when the kids were young, during the last week of July and the first week of August. That year was one of the latest openings for that park in history – the road had opened just the week before – with lakes at 8,000 feet just beginning to thaw, 15 feet of snow around the parking lot for the trailhead to the summit, and Bumpass Hell was closed – “frozen over.” :-) I have a photo with the kids standing next to the sign that informed us!

“The options are endless — view spectacular scenery, see where history happened, take a hike, go on a picnic or look for wildlife,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, director of the National Park Service. “Be sure to ‘picture yourself in a national park’ this week and share your photos, videos, and stories at www.nationalparkweek.org.”

The CNN article showcases some of the National Parks with a slideshow. You can also go to the National Park Service Web site and “plug in a state” to find the National Park nearest to YOU! California has 25 National Parks, 35 National Natural Landmarks, 1,197,656 HOURS donated to the National Parks by volunteers in 2011, and an economic benefit to the state of OVER A BILLION DOLLARS ($1,312,824,000) in 2010 (which was in the current “economic downturn” 😉 ) from tourism to the National Parks in California.

Wikipedia has a list of areas in the United States National Parks System!

The National Park Service has a free iPhone and iPad app (an Android app is in development) to help you plan your trip and track your visits. The app even helps “National Parks Passport” holders to find “passport stamp cancellation stations” within parks to record which parks they have visited.

So… what are you waiting for? 😉

-Bill at

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