Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/18/united-states-national-parks-a.html
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Can’t resist the old saw…
Free as in beer or free as in speech?
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Set free?
(As in liberated? Not sure who/what from though…)
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That’s gonna take a lot of Bon Ami to remove that rust stain.
This irks me. I don’t think we need to encourage more families to treat this as a spring break bonus and pile everyone into the minivan to drive from the city and stop at convenience stores and diners in otherwise remote areas. While I like the idea of going on a hike, what happens if someone gets sick in Yosemite? What if they track the virus to the mom and pop shops in the middle of nowhere?
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We have a camping trip scheduled for Cape Lookout, and I’m wondering what the heck we should do. What is the responsible thing for us and for the communities involved? It would be a trip with minimal contact with people, but it’s still a trip. We’ll hit gas stations, the park office, and the ferry office, for instance.
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I wish that there was a decent National Park nearby.
All the Nat Parks on the East Coast are too small. You’ll interact with too many people on any given day.
Sigh
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NO NO NO!!! I live near Big Bend National Park. We have one hospital with 25 beds and 2 ventilators serving 3 counties. Don’t come here!
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Stay home, please! Rural areas do not have the hospital infrastructure to handle extra people. I own a B&B near Big Bend National Park and we have stopped taking reservations and it is going to cost us a lot but it had to be done.
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“Come on everybody, gather together to practice some social distancing!”
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my state’s only national park is one of the most crowded places you could be during peak tourist season.
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To be fair, he is probably trying to get the wildlife infected such that once entire ecological systems are wiped out, they can then use it as justification for closing the parks and selling them off to private enterprises to be extract for their resources
Bout time. However, the timing for the release of this announcement is way fucked up.
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Well don’t go if you already have symptoms, and don’t stay for a long time. If you pick it up in the park you have a good week or two before you’re on a ventilator.
I’m near Pinnacles NP. It’s a similar problem, the nearest hospital is small and far away. (Mee Memorial in King City is probably closest at 40 minutes drive, they do have a heliport and could move people around in a pinch)
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I’ve never really understood the USian tendency to interpose a layer of bureaucracy between their citizenry and reality. IMO, the parks should have been free and open already. Closing the parks during - for example - Trump’s deliberate shutdowns of the federal government (Remember those, from just over a year ago? Good times) was just bizarre.
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Joshua Tree Report: The park was dang near empty today. The snow level was at 6k feet, and a fairly good cover on the ground. So come on up Happy Campers!
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It’s not a National Park - but the Adirondak State Park in upstate New York is no slouch.
“ 6 Million Acres Forever Wild
The Adirondack Park was created in 1892 by the State of New York amid concerns for the water and timber resources of the region. Larger than several states in New England, bigger even than Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon and the Great Smokies National Parks combined - the Adirondack Park contains the largest protected wilderness area east of the Mississippi.”
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Never heard of it. Is it nice?
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The last time the parks were sans fees, it didn’t work out very well for the parks.
