This Land Is Your Land: The National Park Service - A National Treasure

Rocky Mountain National Park                                                                                          (Photos by Mark)     In my last blog, in Part 1, I drafted a post highlighting four  national park areas: Rocky Mountain National Park, Vicksburg National Military  Park, New River Gorge National Park, and Dry Tortugas National Park.     Have a  look back if you missed it. But that wasn’t the end of the story, for all is not well   with these four examples into our National Park System. At Vicksburg, the USS Cairo experiences environmental decay, particularly fungal  and insect damage, and requires preservation of its wood and metal components. Its supporting structure needs regular inspection and mai...

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO (Photos by Mark) Imagine you are planning a route for an upcoming cross-country trip. Which national park areas might you choose to visit?  You have 433 to choose from but decide well because you’ll probably have company. National park areas are very popular; last year 43 million visitors from all over the country, and the world, were doing the same thing. Consider Rocky Mountain National Park? From Mexico to Alaska, for 2,700 miles the great Rocky Mountain chain forms the backbone of N. America, the world’s longest mountain barrier. Set in central Colorado, this park climbs high – from 7,600 ft to 14,259 ft Longs Peak.  Here, tree-line and tundra, beaver ponds, and montane forests are accessible to all along the park's Trail Ridge Road – spectacular scenery and wildlife are guaranteed. In the Never Summer mountains, you might discover where melting snow begins the Colorado River.  Consider Vicksburg National Military Park? The Civil War c...

My friend William experiences the "Tonic of Wildness" hiking his 1st mountain at Shenandoah National Park (Photos by Mark) Someone once said that the Big Bend is so large, you might get lost out there. I say Big Bend is so large, and so diverse, you just might "find" yourself out there.  From 1988 through 1999, I served at Big Bend National Park, TX with one of the most amazing backyards anyone could ever imagine: Chihuahuan Desert, Rio Grande, and Chisos Mts. I return many times and each time, the sights and sounds and smells of this place come flooding back. It is truly a place for people to discover, and re-discover, what our national parks are all about. A long-forgotten cowboy once wrote that Big Bend is "…where rainbows wait for rain, where the river is kept in a stone box and the water runs uphill, and the mountains tower into the sky except when they disappear to visit other mountains..." One attached image shows a desert thunderstorm with rainbow ...