Here's your chance to help us plan our editorial calendar for the rest of the year.
How would you rank the following categories of stories that we work on at the Traveler. Put another way, which keep you coming back to the Traveler?
* Features
Due to our inability to be everywhere in the National Park System at all times, these stories let us focus on specific issues around the park system. They range from hard-edged topics such as this week's two-part series on how the Park Service interprets history at Fort Laramie National Historic Site and U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop's efforts to do away with the Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, to travel pieces such as "Inn Step With Asheville" and "Arlington House, Home of Robert E. Lee".
* Spot news
These are stories such as the recent search for two missing backcountry skiers at Grand Teton National Park, the theft of scrimshaw artifacts from Cape Cod National Seashore, and mention of various facility openings around the park system.
* Puzzles and Mysterys
* Book reviews
* Gear reviews
* Seasonal travel story packages
Did you find any value in the series of stories we put together for fall visits to the parks, or for summer visits?
Your input will help us decide how best to dedicate our resources in the coming months and hopefully bring you more value from the time you spend on the Traveler. So if you've long been a lurker, this is the time to come out of the dark and leave a comment, even if it's only anonymous.
Story Categories:
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Comments
I'd like to learn more about how climate change may affect our National Parks in this 21st century, and what mitigation and adaptation strategies might be appropriate.
The NPS budget is less than 1/1000th of the Federal budget. Through the years of cuts apparently to come, how might we raise the stewardship of our Parks higher in the national conciousness? What changes in law or policy might free the NPS to utilize its limited budget more effectively?
I'd say Features are the best. The Puzzles don't do anything for me, though they clearly have a big group of fans. Gear reviews can be found on many other sites, NPT probably doesn't have an advantage there. The other categories are all good: I'd probably rank them: spot news, book reviews, then travel.
Spot news is probably my favorite, also, but I always check on travel experiences since I would like to know what to expect and hear what others have experienced in the parks. When you visit a park for the first time you can be overwhelmed with choices and it's nice to know what others find interesting or entertaining. I enjoy the pieces on the lodges, on hikes, etc. With budget cuts, we do need to find ways to support the parks through their foundations or whatever it takes. Time to step up and do more to protect what we have and this site helps.
Kurt,
Your Traveler Site keeps getting better each year. I love your news about the goings on in our parks, but I especially enjoy your stories that tell me what I can and should do at the parks I visit. The readers comments are always an important part of my reading of your articles. I would like to see more articles about campgrounds in or by the parks. I would also like to see more articles about ranger led activities (these were great articles this past year).
Dave
I'd like to read more about community- and government-led efforts to designate new national parks. As a Californian, I'm particularly interested in hearing about the areas Senator Feinstein wants to designate in the Mojave Desert.
Even if these areas never become part of the Parks department, I'd still like to hear about the areas people want to designate, and why.
I'm with David... I like learning about experiences in the park. I like the "check lists" and just in general, what activities people enjoy in a given park. To list a bunch of hikes is one thing but to give an actual account of the hike is so helpful. I especially like learning about things that aren't the "norm". Example, I had never heard of Horsetail Falls in Yosemite - now hoping to go next year. Some of those things may seem common place to someone who lives near by or visits the park frequently but for someone coming for that one time visit from a long distance, it's really great to know about those things in advance! But I must admit, the articles that aren't necessarily in my line of interest are often the ones I learn the most from. So, keep up the great work with the wonderful variety of articles.
For me the features are main reason to read the Traveler. History and politics are my leading interests. The next best thing are personal accounts about trips to the parks featuring well known or not so well known trails and experiences. I really liked the recent Cholla Cactus garden story as it reminded my on my first vitis to Josha Tree (National Monument, not yet National Park back then) because Cholla Cactus garden was one of my first stops in the park and in desert environment. Your article captured my memories very well. Thank you for it.
Bundling features or reports by topic such a seasons or regions (or maybe some series around the Civil war?) works for me. Please keep up the good work.
In my opinion, the Spot news rely too much on the NPS Morning report and I can read that myself. I understand that they might be useful to provide fresh content almost every day thus pushing the Traveler up in visibility at Google, and they are relativly easy to produce. So just keep them and I will take at least a look at most of them.
In general, thanks a lot to all the authors and everyone else involved, including the techs.
I'd vote for an article or two on what NPS is doing to make itself relevant to younger people. The poor agency has for decades been beset by the demands of elderly curmudgeons, and the organizations that represent them, like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Audubon Society, etc., that nothing change. These people and organizations have a crabbed 19th-century view of what the national parks are or should be about. This result to date has meant lots of hiking (an activity that at its best is pleasant but rarely is exhilarating) and commercialized dude-ranch activities in the backcountry and mass vehicular tourism at park gateways and developed areas.
It seems that NPS, wisely and admirably, is aware that the curmudgeons are leading NPS into practical irrelevance and indifference among the general public and is moving away from their model. Witness its plan to build a trail for mountain bikers at Big Bend National Park, which of course has generated howls of execration from the Luddites.
So my question would be, What is the thinking internally at NPS about how to extricate itself from the fuddy-duddies' narrow-mindedness and make itself appealing to people who are not afraid of the future, without sacrificing the essential goal of preserving some of our best wildlands in a natural state?
I agree with IMTNBIKE and would take it further with possible kid developed storylines on both side of the issues.
My 6 year old knows about several of these parks from our visits, but by far his two favorite ones offered the most for his age. Cape hatteras (things to do and waves) and Grand Canyon (PURE unadulterated AWE)
The devil's advocate would have to question IMTNBKE's Luddite comment by noting 1) That Sam enjoys playing in the waves at Cape Hatteras and was awed by the Grand Canyon, two age-old aspects of nature that are obviously appealing to generations young and old, no other toys required, and 2) in the Traveler's recently concluded essay contest for youth 8 to 18 the winners described the national parks as representing a "legacy of history and beauty," touched on how they can offer "a solution to the health
concerns we face today," and
explained how national park settings can offer not just incredible
outdoor experiences you can hold onto for life, but also introduce you
to new friends.
They seemed very happy with what the parks offer in terms of recreation and experiences.
And really, there's more to do in parks than hike if you find that boring. Adrenalin rushes come every day from activities such as white-water paddling, sea kayaking, canoeing, climbing, backcountry skiing, snorkeling, or scuba diving.
Well, even so, that doesn't take away from the undeniable fact that there's a tension between the traditionalists and the nontraditionalists (whom it would be unfair to denigrate as relying on "toys"; it's a far broader issue than that) that must be a major challenge for the NPS. Maybe a guest columnist or reporter could be commissioned to do a story on how the NPS navigates between those shoals. I think it would be interesting.
"Toys" denigrates? And "Luddites" doesn't;-) (Sorry, couldn't resist....)
That tensions exist I don't doubt, but the cause I think is the view that some folks are trying to open the national parks to forms of use that were not intended under the National Park Service Organic Act, the view that lands protected as part of the National Park System are not expected to be managed as are BLM or Forest Service lands, or open to all uses permitted in those landscapes.
This isn't a Luddite approach to managing the parks. Rather, I think it could be argued, it's an approach that these landscapes are unique, have a unique place in society, and need to be preserved as best they can be.
That said, there are many, many broad issues that need to be explored in how the Park Service manages its farflung landscapes -- contradictions abound -- and we're going to touch on that a bit come Monday.
As for commissioning an article, that would likely run around $2,500-$3,000. If you're willing to contribute that amount via our "Help Sponsor the Traveler" button, I'll start recruiting a writer....;-)
Fair enough. I admit that I write in a polemical style.
If the Organic Act consists solely of 16 USC § 1, it's vague about what kinds of uses are suitable for national parks and what uses are not. (I don't know if the Organic Act comprises multiple code sections, however.) It seems that the Act doesn't forbid all sorts of motorized transport, fancy hotels, etc., in the national parks.
No, roads and fancy hotels are definitely allowed....although some think there should be more, but that's another story;-)
Founders and promoters of the Park Service were keenly aware that to promote the parks and gather public support for them, they had to make them accessible and provide beds for folks to lay their heads upon. But at the same time, they also viewed them as landscapes that should be managed differently than Forest Service lands.
Of course, greatly complicating the usage issue was the arrival of the Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. And, I might add, the autonomy superintendents have in deciding what's appropriate, as well as the ever-present political pressures.
Imtnbike--
As an old fuddy duddy, I hold to the idea that park areas exist as a contrast to the activities of our daily lives. We live in a world of noise, urgent meetings, and impossible deadlines. Being in a park area gives us the chance to take off our watches, turn off our iphones, unplug our androids, and live life according to the rhythms of nature or the measured pace of our history. There are plenty of places in the public domain where it is perfectly acceptable to go single-track mountain biking or BASE jumping, but we have to guard against, in my opinion, making national park areas like everywhere else. Do you remember the argument that raged 20 or so years ago about making trips on the Colorado River oars-only experiences? The argument against it was that many people didn't have time to do a rowing trip. My feeling was that if this were the case, then people were floating the river at the pace of human enterprise and not attuned to the timeless pace of the river.
Aldo Leopold put it this way: "Let me tell you of a wild river bluff which until 1935 harbored a falcon's eyrie. Many visitors walked a mile to the river bank to picnic and watch the falcons. Comes now some planner and dynamites a road to the river, all in the name of recreational planning. The excuse is that the public formerly had no right of access;now it has such a right. Access to what? Not access to the falcons for they are gone."
Rick
Hey, Rick —
Thanks for posting that. I don't disagree with your basic premise. Actually, you make excellent points. As you say, we live in a world of phenomenal distraction, of jumpy multitasking, of manufactured urgencies. These arguably run against our evolutionary makeup (humans evolved to be long-distance runners and foot travelers, operating rhythmically and steadily) and the effects of modern multitasking probably are pernicious even at the neurological level. They certainly are at the social level. I see that everytime I see someone race up to a red light and sit there drumming her fingers because 12 seconds waiting for the light to change is intolerable. Quite unhealthy.
So, thinking that way does not make you a fuddy-duddy, else I am one too.
What has happened, though, is that a strain of modern environmentalism has devolved, also unhealthily in my opinion, into a kind of fundamentalist temperance movement. Some Puritan sects thought that buttons were the work of the devil and that only hooks and eyes were suitable to fasten clothing. There was no logic to this; it was simply a received tenet. Similarly, some conservationist/environmentalist factions think that the wheel is the work of the devil and that only travel by hoof, foot, or paddle is religiously acceptable. The wheel is a defilement, a profanation of outdoor cathedrals.
There's no logic to that either. I can understand this viewpoint if we're talking about motorized activities, because those do have objectively annoying effects (although, unlike many mountain bikers, I do not hate ATVers and motorcyclists and admire the latter's skills in riding on technical singletrack trails). But a bicycle wheel enables one to go quietly at perhaps 7 mph with less impact on the landscape than an overnight backpacker has. As for pack trains involving heavy mammals, the comparison is much more dramatic. Yet we don't see (many) people fomenting against large commercial pack trains ripping up trails and campsites. And we do see (quite a few) people railing against bicycles. Entire organizations like the Wilderness Society are obsessively opposed to them. It is illogical, but explainable because America's wildlands have become substitute churches for a highly motivated subset of conservationists and environmentalists. That's my point about Luddites.
Clearly, Imntbike has made all my points and then some. I'll go back to doing spreadsheets and making a buck or two. :)
Hey Kurt, I'm more than just a little late, but personally I'd like to read about how the NPS is going to reinstate the $50 / year "National Parks Annual Pass". Hell, make it $75 for all I care. Now THAT would be newsworthy.
LH, have you tapped into my computer? Watch these pages next week.....
I would love to have a message board for topics that are brought up by the crowd. If I'm going to visit Big South Fork, I'd like to be able to post that and see if anyone has some suggestions on the best way to visit it. Or I'd like to learn what apps people use to improve their park planning or experiences. I realize that some of the control would be lost but I would also like that too. This is a great site that I visit nearly everyday so I don't want to bash it, just my two cents on improving it.
Jon, we'd love to offer that, but until we can find a reliable spam filter...some years ago we offered forums for just the sort of thing you're seeking, and it was a spam magnet. And with just one or two of us monitoring the site a day, having to vet all the comments to make sure spam wouldn't sneak through would be troublesome. That said, it's always in the back of our minds and we continue to seek a solution.
And, I know from personal experience that Kurt et al will work with those who suggest articles in non-spammy ways.
I personally injoy the insights from the "how NPS makes sausage" inner workings articles. I enjoy the historical articles. I enjoy the photo laden articles. I enjoy articles about places I've seen, and about places I may never see. I guess I'm just a Traveler junkie - I hit the site a couple of times every day.
I guess what I don't enjoy are the die hard partisan advocates who stake out a position and haggle their talking points with anyone who disagrees with their particular pet rock. Especially those who in one way or another anti-NPS.
All of this in my personally opinionated personal opinion.