If you are one of the people who dream about traveling in the National Parks during your golden years, you may not want to read this latest blog. It is not meant to depress, but it is a small taste of reality. I will use our current stay at Zion National Park to enlighten you on “The New National Park Service.”
First, let me start out with the fact that the natural magic still exists in the park systems many units. There is just much more stress involved in getting yourself into the park of choice and to the point of enjoying what is still there under a thickening veneer of bureaucracy, overpopulation, and degradation in attitude of park service employees who seem sick and tired of answering the same old questions visitors have day after day.
Spring and fall used to be the time to travel and beat the crowds. No longer is that true. Yes, the boomers are coming. Personally, we don’t like being on a schedule, but we are learning that if we want to have a camping site in most parks we had better become proficient on the government’s online reservation site. Example: We showed up at Zion only to find the campgrounds full. We spent three days outside the park on the computer trying to secure a site. It will do you no good to talk to campground gate personnel because most of them come straight out of the Jerry Seinfeld sitcom. Think, “Soup Nazi.” You have to deal with someone in a cubical, three-thousand miles away in New York. The problem is the Park Service and the Reservation Service have two different sets of rules. If you want peace and tranquillity when you arrive, you better have all your ducks in a row (campsites reserved well in advance). I have discovered there are a couple ways to game this system. The reservation site shows a W on sites that are open to “First Come First Serve” no reservation campers every morning. Park Service employees are trained to deny these sites exist. Through extensive research on my part (All rangers at Zion now hate me), I have discovered these sites are saved for emergencies (gate keepers friends and relatives show up unexpectedly) and VIP’s. You can get a site in any park, any time, you just have to delete the Mr./Mrs/Ms in front of your name and re-title yourself Senator or Congressman. I’m kind of thinking of going with Sec. of the Interior Mallery. It just seems to have a nice ring to it.
Most parks still have a small percentage of “First Come First Serve” sites. They fill quickly and early. You have a better chance of dealing with these campgrounds because they are hosted by Park Service Volunteers. These are usually seniors who aren’t sick of seniors. They work for free, are much more organized, friendly, helpful and are not only informed, but willing to share information.
You can save yourself a lot of time by learning to read facial expressions. If you are approaching a ranger that has that Clint Eastwood look, “Go ahead, make my day,” “Are ya feeling lucky, punk, well, are ya?” Keep moving. Try not to make eye contact. It could be contagious. I don’t want to sound age biased but the results of my research are clear. The older the ranger the better treatment and information you will receive. Most of these young rangers don’t even know Dick Nixon was a crook. To test my theory, I questioned five fresh rangers (those that had not learned to hate me yet, and one who had but didn’t remember me) seeking information I already had answers. Just south of Zion is a beautiful, free, BLM campground. It sits right on the Virgin River and although it offers no amenities, it is a safe, natural place to camp just outside the park. We found it on our own. It was never mentioned to us as we were turned away from each campground and asked rangers for camping suggestions. We were only given a list of commercial campgrounds (and treated as if we were unwanted guests) just outside the park that average $50 a night.
Asking the same alternative campground question to various rangers from ages twenty-something to seventy-something. Here are my results: Ranger #1 20-Something. (Clint Eastwood type) “I have not idea.” Ranger #2 20-Something. (Campground Toll Gate “Soup Nazi) “There’s a commercial park right across the river. They might have something.” (“I’m sorry, did I mention I was Sec. of the Interior?”) Ranger #3 30-Something. (Wise guy. Not one of the Wise Men. I interrupted his conversation with another ranger about their next career moves.) “There is nothing close to the park except commercial campgrounds.” Ranger #4 40-Something. (Morning Campground Toll Gate ranger who obviously had not had her coffee fix yet.) “Nothing.” (What about the BLM campground just south of the park?) “That’s not a campground. They don’t even have restrooms.” Ranger #5 50-Something. (Standup Comedian. Full of BS but made you feel good without telling you anything useful.) “You can camp in my driveway but I’m booked until late August.” Ranger #6 70-Something. (My personal favorite) “You can’t stay in the RV parking overnight, but there is a real nice BLM campground just outside the park. It’s right on the river. If you get up here early in the morning you should have little trouble finding a site in the “First Come, First Serve” South Campground.”
You can do whatever you want. Me, I’m always going to direct my questions to an older ranger who likes his job, knows what his duties are, and doesn’t have the facial expression of Hannibal Lector.
What the park service needs is a new corps of Mystery Shoppers (Campers). That way when a little blue haired lady asks a ranger where to catch the escalator to Half Dome the ranger will think twice before answering, “Go to the trailhead at the end of Yosemite Valley and take the first bank of elevators. Get off near the falls. The escalator is just left of the lupine.” If I don’t get the North Cascade backcountry ranger job, mystery camper would be perfect for me. I love to grade rangers.
I wish this was as grime as it gets, but there is more. The park service does not get to keep all the money they take in. Much of it is siphoned off to fatten the US treasury and therefore perpetuate the increasing national debt. They do this willingly because they know if the government ever runs out of ink, the first thing they are going to do is put National Parks up for sale. They are currently leasing them out to more and more concessioners. If volunteers ever go on strike they would go immediately into insolvency.
The park service, believe it or not, is now running scams on visitors that have been successful beyond their wildest dreams. You are not going to believe this. You can check it out for yourself. The park service is now offering park rangers as part of an Escort Service. I’m not talking your basic ranger walk (some of which now require a guide payment to attend.) Let me explain. As you approach Zion National Park in your RV you read a road sign, “All RVs and Buses must stop in 1/4 mile.” It makes you think there is an entrance booth ahead. By the time you see that it’s a “Historical Marker” type pull-off you have already passed it and there is no turn around. “I wonder what it said?”
I think it is actually a “Hysterical Marker” cleverly designed by the park service to not be read by a large percentage of visitors.
Several miles up the road you come to the official entrance booth manned by a ranger that loves his job, but in the wrong way. He thinks his job is to irritate as many visitors as he can, and he is armed with an inadequate management plan he has learned to wield relentlessly. If you do not have a Park Passport card he first will ask for a $25 entrance fee. Then his favorite piece of information, “You will have to pay $15 to go through the Zion Tunnel.” I’m blindsided by this little nugget of reality because I missed the sign so cleverly tucked into the side of the road. Having been through the tunnel before with a much larger rig, I had to ask, “Do I take up more air than smaller vehicles?”
I was told I needed an Escort Service through the tunnel if I was driving an RV. I wasn’t happy, but that did make some sense to me. I’m sure the park service has had expensive delays caused by people who can’t control the monster RV’s now on the road. I still wanted to think about it a minute. I must have been looking like a deer in the headlights of a Mac truck. I politely (honest) asked this turkey (ranger #3 above) if I could pull over in a wide turn around and think my options over. He replied, “If you run I will have law enforcement chase you down.” I couldn’t believe this attitude. Was I really in a National Park? Has it really become this much of a zoo. Have visitors actually pushed park service personnel this far over the edge? I couldn’t contain myself. Okay, I never can. “Yea, Einstein, I’m going to try to outrun park service law enforcement to a tunnel that needs and an escort in this twenty-seven foot motorhome pulling a Saturn.”
I pulled over to study my options. It would cost more to go back out of the park and drive around to the south entrance now that they had me this far in with their poor communication sting. I went back and paid the second booth my $15 RV tax so that Einstein couldn’t see me. I wanted him to call 911 and report a “Boomer on the Run.”
Next comes the Escort Service scam. The park service is so embarrassed by their own policy, when they extract the RV tax from you they tell you it’s because you need an escort for passage through the tunnel. It works. I felt better knowing I was charged $15 dollars for a service that smaller rigs did not have to use. I was a little upset when I arrived at the tunnel and found that there is NO ESCORT! There were two good looking ranger flag girls who might have been escort material, but they weren’t going to escort anyone. The tunnel was one way traffic. The flag rangers let southbound traffic pass, then shut it down and let northbound come through. It wouldn’t matter if you had a Commercial Bus or a Mini Cooper. You had the whole tunnel to yourself. Cars, RV’s and Buses went through with us, but only the RV’s and Buses paid the tax. I wasn’t to far off when I had asked Einstein if I “used more air than everyone else.”
I did a little Google Research and discovered Zion National Park took in just under $500,000.00 in 2009 with this nifty little con. Subtract the flag ranger salaries and that is one concession I am going to bid on as soon as the park service finds such an operation too overwhelming for them to operate themselves.
If you have made it this far into my grumbling, let me give you a little glimpse into my crystal ball. The Boomers haven’t even snapped out of the starting blocks yet. The rangers that already don’t like boomers are going to start realizing it takes four of them to pay the Social Security of each Gray Hair asking them the same stupid questions over and over. The parks are going to price family camping out of existence the way baseball exterminated their fan-base. If you think these stories are exaggerated and my predictions extreme, try this: Go to the park service reservation site www.recreation.gov and try to book a site in Zion or Yosemite National Parks this month. When you find it impossible, go to Ebay or Craigslist and find one. National Park Campsites are now a huge business for people who have learned to game the inadequate system the parks operate. I just watched a three day campsite in Yosemite sell for $475.00 on Ebay. I called the guy and he has plenty more. He books them as soon as they come online and scalps them to people desperately seeking solitude.
Let me close with the fact that I come from a perspective of camping in National Parks for over 50 years. I’m addicted. I will continue to adjust my attitude and accept the changes that are guaranteed to dial down National Park enjoyment. Because once I shoe horn my way in, fight my way to the back country office, negotiate a permit and make payment on a few days of solitude, I know I am going to leave the maddening crowds of visitors and still find the magic that made these areas worth setting aside.
This is the new Smokey the Bear Public Service Announcement: Only you can Prevent Over Crowded National Parks. Parks Kill. Do not plan a visit. Bears eat people, 2,000 ft. drop offs claim dozens of visitors each year, spring rapids drown unsuspecting swimmers, and let’s not forget about rangers that go POSTAL!
My suggestion is you stay home where it is safe and keep reading my blog. --Keep Smilin‘
Important Message: In all fairness to rangers, I will have to admit, if I had to work everyday with the masses of people I have witnessed lately in the parks, I may go Postal. More to come in my next blog as I critique Seqouia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite. One management decision that is proving effective as crowd control in many parks, is the shuttle system. As a lifetime RVer I would vote to move all campgrounds out of the parks and shuttle everyone in and out.
