Built To Roam: America's National Parks: Closed until further notice

The US National Park System is made up of over 400 parks, monuments, battlefields, and historic sites encompassing more than 83 million acres. It contains North America's biggest canyon, tallest mountain, mightiest river, largest cave, lowest elevation, greatest desert, The Statue of Liberty, Alcatraz Island, and the Washington Monument, just to name a few. All of which are available and open to the public, until today that is.

So as many of you have probably already herd, our government is officially shut down. Closed. AFK. Maybe not a "Pull the plug from the wall" kind of shutdown, but more of a "Send Mr. Arnold down to the control room to reboot the system" kind of shut down. What does this mean for us? Well a lot of things, most of which I can admit to saying I don't really know, but what I am aware of is that as of midnight last night all US National Parks, Monuments, and Zoos were indefinitely closed. That's right, the woods are closed. This means anyone who is currently in a National Park is being asked to leave, and anyone who already had plans to visit anytime within the foreseeable future, has to cancel said plans. And to top it off today, as many of you who might use this little site called Google already know, is Yosemite National Parks’ birthday, which it will be Eeyor-like, spending alone. But at least you can still write on it's Facebook wall.

I realize that among the other side effects of our Governments ill planning, the closing of our National Parks might not seem like a huge deal, but I can assure you it is. In 1995 the parks were closed for 28 days, leading to millions lost in tourism revenue. The state of Arizona paid out of pocket just to keep some of the more popular spots along the Grand Canyon open for tourists who had traveled from around the world to enjoy. Not only is it a loss of money, and jobs, and people's time but if they can so easily be closed down today in attempts to save money, then if times were to get tougher why couldn’t they figuratively be forced to close them for good? That’s a scary thought. Now I know they wouldn't just disappear, but without government funding and protection who knows what could happen to them. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to experience a large number of our National Parks, and through doing so I’ve gained so much more respect and appreciation for nature and the Parks program. They are some of the most beautiful places America has to offer and so many of us haven’t had the opportunity to experience them. So if nothing else comes from the events of today maybe we’ll become a little more aware of our National Parks and just how privileged we are to have them. And maybe when they turn over the “Yes, We’re Open” sign on the woods, you’ll hop in your preferred method of transportation and visit one of them. But in the meantime I guess we’ll just have to settle for the miles and miles of open space in Grand Theft Auto Online, which also conveniently came out today.

One of the shorter hikes from my trip to Rocky Mountain National Park this summer was along the Ute Trail from the Alpine Visitor Center on Trail Ridge Road. It was a great short first hike in the park with tons of 10 out of 10 views in its 4 miles of above tree line hiking. We started hiking at the tail end of a thunderstorm, probably before we should have, and headed two miles out and then back again along the same trail. Tons of wildlife. After heading back to our cars we drove down to Moraine Park Campground to spend the night. Great little hike, I only wish the weather was better so we could have gone farther.

As always thanks for reading guys, Cheers!

Mileage: 4 Miles