Category Archives: Travel

Arizona senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association said maintenance costs should fall to Congress, not visitors.

CBS News: Grand Canyon, other popular national parks may double fees. (AP)

“The National Park Service is considering a steep increase in entrance fees at 17 of its most popular parks, mostly in the U.S. West, to address a backlog of maintenance and infrastructure projects.

Visitors to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion and other national parks would be charged $70 per vehicle, up from the fee of $30 for a weekly pass. At others, the hike is nearly triple, from $25 to $70.

A 30-day public comment period opened Tuesday. The Park Service says it expects to raise $70 million a year with the proposal at a time when national parks repeatedly have been breaking visitation records and putting a strain on park resources. Nearly 6 million people visited the Grand Canyon last year.

“We need to have a vision to look at the future of our parks and take action in order to ensure that our grandkids’ grandkids will have the same if not better experience than we have today,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. “Shoring up our parks’ aging infrastructure will do that.””

Link via dangerousmeta.

“This callous proposal will needlessly punish local, predominantly rural communities that depend on parks and public lands for outdoor recreation, sustainable jobs and economic growth”

The Washington Post: Interior chief urges shrinking 4 national monuments in West.

“Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is recommending that four large national monuments in the West be reduced in size, potentially opening up hundreds of thousands of acres of land revered for natural beauty and historical significance to mining, logging and other development.

Zinke’s recommendation, revealed in a leaked memo submitted to the White House, prompted an outcry from environmental groups who promised to take the Trump administration to court to block the moves.

The Interior secretary’s plan would scale back two huge Utah monuments — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — along with Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou.”

We’ve been to Grand Staircase Escalante and are/were planning on visiting Bears Ears in the future. There is so much natural beauty and pristine wilderness in Utah. Don’t throw it away please!

Gone Fishing

André and I went on a trip to Scotland earlier this month, here are a few impressions.

Ruined house at Loch Assynt:

Stoer Lighthouse:

Sunset at Stoer Lighthouse:

Cliff near Quiraing on the Isle of Sky:

View from atop Quiraing on the Isle of Sky:

Landscape on the Isle of Lewis (and Harris):

View from the summit of Braeriach, the third highest mountain of Britain (after Ben Nevis and Ben Macdui):

It seems that our webserver also took some time off during our trip, but my trusty admin has since fixed the problem, and now I’m back and Serendipita is up and running again.