Well, I thought I'd have trouble writing one blog a week, just goes to show you how much there is to discuss (read: complain, rag on, etc). And this one is a little personal, and really does upset me because of the value I place on our National Parks and the connection with nature they provide, one of the real jewels our government can actually brag about (for those of you unaware, the United States and her National Parks will celebrate their 100th anniversary in 2016).
So, our government is on the brink of shutdown because we can't collectively determine how to fund the budget for the next 6 months, let alone the next year. And one of the "dispensable" services that our tax dollars pay for is our National Parks and the people that run and manage them. Now, this is why it is personal - for the past few summers, our family has taken a trip out west from Colorado to various National Park locations. Our first real road and camping trip was to the absolutely awe inspiring Grand Canyon (which brought back vivid memories of being there as a kid and remembering that thunder storm that scared my sisters half to death when lightning flashed and banged within the same instant, yes, we were that close). On the way there, the kids got their first look at Mesa Verde, a park I fell in love with as a kid. We stopped not only at National Parks, but state parks, one of our all time favorites being the pink sand dunes of Utah (absolutely stunning salmon and pink coral colored sand dunes). We stopped at Sunset Crater, because my son wanted to see a real volcano, even if it was very extinct, stood next to petrified trees at the Petrified Forest National Park (another of my faves as a kid), wandered through painted deserts that had more colors than any painting could ever convey, and had a great car road trip, camping, campfire food, great pictures, even better memories, and the knowledge that I had passed on a legacy I'd inherited from my parents, wanting my children to be able to connect with nature.
We'd been to other Colorado National Parks and monuments before, the Great Sand Dunes, Rocky Mountain National Park, Florissant National Fossil Beds, list goes on. But the road trip to Arizona really allowed us all to connect and have fun. So what did we do the next year? You got it, but this time it was Wyoming, and the incomparable Yellowstone and Teton parks. I had thought that the Grand Canyon was incredible, but this was my first time to the park, and the magnificence of the animals as well as the sheer humbleness you feel before nature in these parks just blew me away. Seeing Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the sound of water crashing over the Lower Falls, there is nothing like it. And throw in to boot our first live view of a grizzly, and the beautiful and mesmerizing Tetons, this was a summer trip worth taking! And one more stop on the way home for the kids, Dinosaur National Monument!
So now we're looking at our summer road trip for this year. Is it Nevada, California, maybe a trip to the Dakotas, we haven't decided quite yet. And if we have no employees and wonderfully dedicated Park Rangers there to watch over visitors, what happens to that summer trip? What happens to their families? One of my snowboarding buddies works for the National Parks (talk about a job I would love to have) what happens to him and the estimated 800,000 other employees that would sit out of work? What would that do to our slightly recovering but still anemic economy? I'm ready to do my part, pay for my yearly National Parks pass, hit the road (though my wife wants to ditch the tent and get an Airstream or the like, which isn't such a bad idea when I think about it, and I am drooling over the Eddie Bauer edition Airstream right now.....). I've read figures like 7.9 MILLION jobs lost during the great recession, this little gov't snafu will be 10% of that number, can you believe it? I'm hoping I wake up in the AM to better news, our legislators working together to stave off this issue, our partisan bickering forgotten as we do what is best and right for these employees. Do I have faith? Always. Do I have confidence? Well.....
"I think I know something about investments, and there’s no better investment than our National Parks." —HANK PAULSON, Secretary of the Treasury
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