If the US Gov has a shutdown, won't our National Parks be closed? I have booked a hiking trip next week to Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon. I am wondering if I am going to need to cancel.

If the National Parks are shutdown, where out West would you all hike that would not be affected by the shutdown? I have open ended airline tickets so I am pretty flexible in location.

If I can't find a place out West, I was thinking about hiking in the Adirondacks or Grandfather Mtn. in NC which is privately owned I believe.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your time.

David

Maybe. Xanterra is the consessionaire for many Parks and they will still operate. People live and go to school in Grand Canyon National Park. The Law Enforcement Rangers will be working.

You need to call and verify what is operating and what is not.

There are vast areas in the west that are not National Park areas that are well worth visiting. As far as I know, most National Forests will be accessible - there will simply be no government services.

There are many excellent State Parks. Custer State Park in South Dakota, for instance, is the equal of many national parks. We could get a fine discussion going on that topic.

You have been given a lemon - make lemonade. Get off the Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon treadmill and experience the rest of the best of the West. Let's see- there's Monument Valley (Navajo Tribal Park), the Hopi mesas (if pueblos are your thing) for openers.

BTW, I spent a career in the NPS and I still bleed green and gray. It's just that National Parks, as good as they are, do not encompass all the wonderful experiences available in this country.

Meteor Crater, Lake Tahoe, Navajo Mountain/Rainbow Bridge (a trip on the Reservation that is fully NP quality). The list goes on and on....

What a great post oldranger!!!

Old Rangers post is right on the mark! But it looks like flashpacker will get at least part of his trip in Utah. They have applied a band aid to the problem and may actually have a cure as well.

Thank you all very much. This thread allowed me to scratch an itch that bugs every time someone talks about "going west" and they list all the prominent, justly famous areas, and nothing else. The big parks are overwhelmed with hordes of visitors, leading to quotas and bureaucratic hassles, while many gems go undiscovered. That is not necessarily a bad thing for those of us who seek them out, but an ideal situation would see a more even distribution of visitors.

The crowding works both ways. Not only is the quality degraded for the visitors, but the same thing happens for the staff. I have worked in crowded parks (Mesa Verde) trying to give tours through cliff dwellings, where my presentation eroded as we simply tried to move the large numbes along the path.

In contrast, a guided tour at Channel Islands National Park (San Miguel Island) puts the ranger in contact with a small group, typically four to six, for the entire day, while you hike, sometimes as much as sixteen miles. That is a much better excursion all the way around.

There is a common perception that the NPs are the top of the heap, followed by National Monuments, then State Parks, etc. Statistically, there might be a measure of truth to that concept, but when you get down to cases, there are glaring exceptions. I prefer Fort Robinson State Park (Nebraska) to Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas), for instance.

HOSP is the case that demonstrates that national park areas are created by politicians, and like so much of our political process, their decisions don't always stand up to careful scrutiny.

I will now relinquish the rest of my time to the next speaker and climb down off the soap box....

Great posts, oldranger!!!!



I don't hike in national parks because my beloved Hysson (in my avatar) is not allowed there. And I defy anyone to find mountains more beautiful than in the National Forest wilderness areas in Wyoming's Wind Rivers, Washington's Glacier Peak Wilderness, Oregon's Three Sisters and Eagle Cap Wilderness Areas--just to name a very few.

Ah, but they are NP's for a reason. On the other hand, visit them once and go someplace else the rest of your time.

Wilderness, many put Desolation down in CA because they say there are too many people. Well, go further, most are a dayhike in then they leave in the afternoon. Like other places, even Yosemite, go further than four miles and you will leave people behind.