Celebrate, National Park Week

View of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim at sunset.

This week, April 20-28 is National Park Week, a time to celebrate "America's best idea", our National Park System.  Currently, there are a total of 61 national parks, though the National Park Service administers many additional units, designated as national monuments, battlefields, lake shores, sea shores, etc.  The first national park, Yellowstone, was founded in 1872, while the most recent park, Indiana Dunes was just created, 15 Feb 2019.  These parks protect a total area of approximately 211,000 sq. km, protect thousands of different species, both plant and animal, and provide for amazing recreational opportunities for us.  And, annual visitations to these parks continue to break records, with the top three most visited national parks, Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon and Rocky Mountains National Parks, alone drawing 22,392,188 visitors in 2018 (National Park Service data).  Nine parks broke visitation records in 2018, and five of these broke records set the year before, in 2017.  In 2018, the NPS reported approximately 318.2 million recreation visits within all units of the national park system, the third highest total ever (NPS, News Release March 5, 2019).  And unfortunately, we continue to under-fund the NPS, and currently it has been estimated that there is over $10 billion worth of required maintenance and upgrades to keep our parks working smoothly, and allow them to continue to deal with record visitations.  As many have said, we are "loving our parks to death", but that is better than the alternative, though something needs to be done.  But this week, let us all celebrate National Park Week, and the beauty and majesty of these amazing protected landscapes.  So get out there, explore, experience and support "America's best idea", our incredible national parks.  I have been very fortunate to have visited many of these parks (about 22 of 61 parks to date), and below are a collection of photographs which I took at these parks.

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