The National Parks Service will mark its 97th anniversary on Sunday, Aug. 25. Most of the parks will be celebrating by offering FREE ADMISSION! Get out there and visit your national parks!
From the NPS website:
Since 1916, the American people have entrusted the National Park Service with the care of their national parks. With the help of volunteers and park partners, we are proud to safeguard these more than 400 places and to share their stories with more than 275 million visitors every year. But our work doesn’t stop there.
We are proud that tribes, local governments, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individual citizens ask for our help in revitalizing their communities, preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, and creating close to home opportunities for kids and families to get outside, be active, and have fun.
You can find out more about the National Park Service – and find a National Park near you – on their website HERE.
Amusing Planet posted a blog with GREAT pictures about Half Dome and the joys of hiking to the top.
As a big fan of our open spaces including national forest, state parks, and so on I firmly believe that using them to grow marijuana is a bad idea. It’s not that I’m against the plant in any way – I’m very 420 friendly – I just don’t believe public lands should be used to grow it. I’m a firm supporter of the Mendocino County, California’s yellow zip-tie program from a couple of years back. It was a great idea, and it’s a shame the state of California didn’t stand behind it and allowed the federal government to swoop in and wipe out the legal and law-abiding growers crops.
Dick Hagerty, an Oakdale real estate developer active in community nonprofits, has written an excellent community column in the Modesto Bee about getting outdoors and hiking the Sierras.
Peter T. Hoss has penned an editorial for the Monterey Herald about the idiotic Draft Merced River Plan. In it, he lays out issues with the plan which I wholeheartedly agree with.