Recent comments

These are the stories that make this a great web site and bring back great memories of these nation treasures we have.

The 1st time we went to Glacier we were at St Marys for 3 days waiting for the Going to the Sun Road to reopen after a early fall snowstorm.Enjoyed the wait and what a drive it was.

The good news is, there are options in the Whites for those seeking a lower level of service at lower cost. The U.S. Forest Service permits camping throughout the White Mountain National Forest, except above treeline (unless there is two feet or more of snow) and in designated Forest Protection Areas. AMC maintains six backcountry campsites on the stretch of the Appalachian Trail between Lonesome Lake Hut and Carter Notch Hut, including one tent site located immediately adjacent to Mizpah Spring Hut. The fee is $8/ per person. In addition to the sites maintained by AMC, there are three fee sites and cabins maintained by the Randolph Mountain Club within a mile of the AT, and two no-fee sites maintained by the U.S. Forest Service (Valley Way and Osgood tent sites). In the wider White Mountains and Mahoosucs regions, AMC’s backcountry campsite program maintains a total of 18 campsites, many with shelters. Nine are no-fee sites.

"Real" has lost any objective meaning in rhetoric. "I am a real blahblah" or "The real issue is XYZ" are pretty meaningless, when you realize and admit that if you ask 80 people what the 'real issue' is on anything you'll get 80 different answers.

In this discussion 'real' only means 'important to me'.

Still no one here will address the dishonest and manipulation of data that is driving this issue. You guys always harp back to the "poor" underfunded National Parks. I do not think that is even relevant to this discussion but since you are avoiding the real issue of the lies and deceit how about the graph someone posted that shows NPS funding increasing steadily over the past few years, not to mention that the Smokies received 80 million extra stimulus dollars with no mention of backcountry issues. That 80 million is 4 x their annual budget. How much of their annual budget goes to backcountry maintenance etc? Almost nothing. But backcountry users will pay and be the only ones to do so.

It's like arguing with the NPS. They avoid the real issues and throw out red herrings and go back to the old, boring and inaccurate 'Poor underfunded NPS diatribe." I am still waiting for someone here to read that FOIA and tell me what they think of page 5 and Ditmanson's authorization to collect a fee for a reservation system. I'm certain no one will tackle that watermelon because it is not defensible even by a NPS employee posting on company time or a retired one.

David - You make a good point about how Congress chooses to fund the parks, and this is a subject that has been discussed at length in other threads on the Traveler in months past. For better or worse, the trend in recent years has been for Congress to ask the NPS to raise more and more of its support via user fees, and that inevitably results in some unhappy users - as clearly confirmed by this discussion!

Glacier is an incredible and wonderful place-- God's country for sure!

Daryl, I know that your schedule is tough but it would be worth it for to make it when the road is open. Thank you!

Tennessee Backpacker, no, I don't work for and have never worked for the National Park Service or any branch of the federal government. Neither have any of my family members. In fact, I don't personally know anyone -- friend or aquaintance or neighbor -- who works for the Park service. I have gratitude for our national parks. And I just call it as I see it.

David Crowl -- an interesting proposal for sure. But I expect that the original legal agreement isn't written quite that way. Also, descendants of the original GSMNP land owners may no longer live in NC or TN. (And to be exact about it, the true original owners of that land were, for the most part, forcibly moved to Oklahoma.) That said, I don't see that anyone -- local person, out-of-state person, descendant of either the original white or indigenous land owners, etc. -- is being denied the right to enter the park.

Is a back country ranger an amenity? Is search and rescue an amenity?

The intent of "do not charge an entrance fee" by the state of TN was to keep locals and their ancestors who were forced off their land from being "charged" to enjoy it in the future. The park service by putting in these type of fees are disgraceful. Believe me the people of the state of TN are looking at every avenue to make sure the GSMNP superintendent knows how we feel. This is not over by a long shot.

I say if you can't charge an entrance fee, then charge a parking fee. I am ok with backcountry camping fees. It seems the intent of the agreement for not charging entrance fees was to not burden the locals from driving through the park out of necessity (to see family, go to the next town for shopping, etc...) When you are talking about one of the most visited national parks, my question is how many are only passing through and how many are there to see the park. You have to pay for park personel and upkeep somehow.