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For Grand Teton National Park, this year has, to put it bluntly, been crazy busy.
In September the park counted 570,584 visitors, the second-highest tally for that month in park history. Notably, it pushed the park’s year-to-date visitation to 3,493,937, a record for an entire year, and with October, November, and December to go.
Grand Teton Superintendent Chip Jenkins discusses the impacts of that visitation.
:02 National Parks Traveler introduction
:12 Episode introduction with Kurt Repanshek
2:10 The Road Scholar - Bill Mize - The Spirit of South Dakota
2:23 Western National Parks Association
2:44 Potrero Group
3:12 Nova Scotia Tourism
3:44 North Cascades Institute
4:01 Grand Teton National Park Foundation
4:33 Grand Teton National Park Superintendent Chip Jenkins discusses his park's visitation issues with Kurt Repanshek.
19:58 Almost Home - Randy Petersen - The Sounds of the Great Smoky Mountains
20:12 Washington’s National Park Fund
20:46 Yosemite Conservancy
21:09 Friends of Acadia
21:35 Interior Federal Credit Union
21:57 Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation
22:19 Crowded Grand Teton continues
46:14 Amaranth - Bill Mize - The Sounds of the Great Smoky Mountains
46:54 Episode Closing
47:36 Orange Tree Productions
48:09 Splitbeard Productions
48:20 National Parks Traveler footer
Have you ever closely inspected the landscape when you’re touring the National Park System, particularly in the West? You never know what you might find.
Back in 2010 a 7-year-old attending a Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park spied a partially exposed fossil that turned out to be the skull of a 32-million-year-old saber-toothed cat.
If you’ve ever visited Petrified Forest National Park you’ve no doubt marveled over the colorful fossilized tree trunks. There are also fossilized trees on the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, but nowhere near as colorful.
Wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, once roamed across the northern tier of the United States, and as far south as New Mexico in the Rockies and southern California in the Sierra Nevada range. But after more than a century of trapping and habitat loss, wolverines in the lower 48 today exist only as small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and northeast Oregon.
Spur a discussion about traveling to a national park for a vacation and odds are that it will revolve around getting out into nature, looking for wildlife, perhaps honing your photography skills, or marveling at incredible vistas.
Will the discussion include destinations that portray aspects of the country’s history, or cultural melting pot?
Tens of millions of people in the United States will be able to witness a Total Solar Eclipse on Monday as the rare astronomical event cuts a path from Texas to Maine, up to 122 miles wide in some spots. This is a great opportunity to see the exact moment when the moon fully blocks the sun, creating a blazing corona visible to those observing from the center line of totality.
With March madness down to the Sweet 16, and Opening Day of Major League Baseball having arrived, we’re going to take a break this week and dive into our podcast archives for this week’s show.
This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at the National Parks Traveler. My NCAA bracket was busted the very first day, and while the Yankees won their opening day game against the Houston Astros, I don’t think they’ll go undefeated this year.
The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.
This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.
You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.
So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.
Comments
The NPS will take your money to enter knowing there is nowhere for you to park. that's crrooked. People "oulaw" parking along the road is dangerous. For the sake of public safety, make moe parking or limii visitation.
I'm wondering if national parks consult with theme parks. Theme parks have been dealing with being overcrowded for years as well. I am a somewhat regular visitor to Disney world. I have been less than thrilled about the way they monetize every experience. However they manage a huge amount of people every day. I suspect there are things to be learned from them. Yes. I realize that many national park locals sarcastically refer to the parks as Disney World. But they still manage their visitor experiences reasonably well.
In a contrasting experience, I also attend Canobie Lake Park in Salem, NH annually. They are much smaller and do a phenomenal job managing their crowds. They may also have some valuable insights.
I do understand that national parks are not theme parks and have vastly different missions and resources. Yet, I believe the theme parks may be able to help the national parks transition into an increasingly crowded future.
The Walt Disney Company can build parking lots and garages. And if you've been following the current saga, they also they (currently) have the authority to pretty much self-issue permits through the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which is generally accountable to them by design. They had the foresight to ask for this after previous experiences with theme parks.
That's as opposed to the National Park Service, which has quite a bit of a mission to preserve resources. I've seen how they've tried to take care of parking issues by issuing reserved parking and encouraging shuttles (also reserved) from remote lots miles away. But they simply won't find it in their mission to expand parking lots or build garages. I've heard of proposals to create a shuttle system in Yosemite Valley similar to what Zion Canyon has. The Grand Canyon South Rim has limited parking plus a shuttle system where most cars can't park or even drive. I've seen some voluntary shuttle systems like at Sequoia National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but people still choose to drive.
"But they simply won't find it in their mission to expand parking lots or build garages. "
Greg said nothing about building parking lots or garages. You've invented a strawman, again.
From the NPS's Mission Statement:
"...The Park Service cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world."
Managing visitors' experiences does indeed fall under NPS's extending benefits and outdoor recreation mandates.
See how easy it is to simply respond instead of discounting your own strawmen?
Why are you such a jerk about anything and everything?
Hey, hey, hey, let's keep it courteous, of at least try...everyone.
OK. I'm just a little tired of the insults. I can strangely get along well enough with Mr. Buck. At least he's civil even if we don't necessarily agree.
But as for the comparison with Disney World, it a very different situation they have with crowd control. For one - it's almost all paved. And if you've even heard of recent news, they basically control and finance their own government (via higher than average property taxes) in order to pay for improvements to certain infrastructure such as roads and utilities. Good luck trying to fix a road in Yellowstone.
The big piece with Disney parks crowd control is transportation. Walt Disney World has parking lots and access to freeways. They have an extensive bus network, a monorail system, and even gondolas to ferry visitors around. Crowd control is heavily managed because you're not really getting around there without them once you're parked or rode in. It's impossible to compare a national park to Disney World without acknowledging that transportation issues and parking are an important means of controlling crowds. Heck - Walt Disney's idea with It's a Small World was to somehow find a way to absorb large amounts of people indoors during the summer heat of New York City. But with Disney World, they absorb lots of people in their extensive collection of resort hotels. Even at a smaller place like Disneyland, most visitors are concentrated in a big parking lot and the largest single parking garage in the United States. From that point on they move people in via shuttle buses and trams.
And they absorb crowds by expanding. Right now they're also doing it with reservations. They've always had limits where they would cut off any new entries. While I suppose some of this is what the NPS can learn from, a lot just isn't feasible because the transportation component for a theme park just isn't workable from a national park perspective. Without enough parking, people entering literally circle around until they find parking. And I remember as far back as the early 80s just looking around for a parking spot in Yosemite.
And listening to the audio of the Grand Teton superintendent, transportation is one of his primary issues.