A gentle reminder: in the United States, this is National Parks Week. Free admission to all 397 properties managed by the National Park Service, “84 million acres of the world’s most spectacular scenery, historic landmarks and cultural treasures.”
(Note to the National Park Foundation, which penned the citation above: the parks are inarguably excellent places to visit. Is it necessary to say they offer “the world’s most spectacular scenery, historic landmarks and cultural treasures”? Because now you’re talking about inarguably excellent places in Donald Trumpified language that makes us cringe. And you’re pushing people to compare those excellent places to Mount Thor, the Dingle Peninsula, Everest, Chartres, Angkor Wat, Machu Piccu, Pagan, the Great Wall, the Great Barrier Reef, etc. And it’s not a contest.)
Also deals on tours, merchandise and food.
If you can’t just pick up and visit a park this week (say you have to work, so you can pay taxes and support these amazing places), you can still get a taste of the most popular parks by taking a virtual hike. The good people at Nature Valley commissioned a team to photograph 300 miles of trails in three of America’s signature parks—Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Great Smoky Mountains—using an 11-lens, 360-degree camera similar to the one Google uses to record its “street view” function on Google Maps. Visit the web site and you’ll be able to click your way forward or back on the trail of your choice, and view to the left or right, up or down.
Pretty cool. Not as good as being there, but pretty cool. And it could be useful planning tool. A virtual hike lets you gauge the difficulty of these routes, so you can make an informed judgment about your interest and your ability to handle the terrain.
If you can’t get out of the office this week, start planning for Get Outdoors Day, June 9, when the parks will be free again. Or you could go when it’s convenient and pay the entry fee, because they are all worth it. And they need your money.
Photo of Wild Goose Island, Glacier National Park, via National Park Service.
