Every October, K-12 school teachers in Utah are given time off to attend to the Utah Education Association Conference. And that means all K-12 students are given a three-day weekend. That weekend is this coming weekend, which means that national parks in the Beehive State are expected to be crowded.

A Utah congressman long unhappy with the authority given presidents under The Antiquities Act to establish national monuments has introduced legislation that would extensively rewrite the century-old act. If enacted, the rewrite would limit the purposes for which monuments could be created, require environmental review, and allow presidents to reduce the size of monuments without congressional action.

Roadwork this summer has really upset visitation at Arches National Park in southeastern Utah, as various attractions have been closed to visitors and delays on the park road a daily occurrence. Crews are resurfacing, restoring, and rehabilitating approximately 23 miles of roads and pullouts in Arches National Park along the entrance road (from US Highway 191 to the visitor center), main park road, the campground road, and other spur roads and loops. Road work is scheduled to last through November.

The Trump administration announced Wednesday an end to a controversial ban on the sale of disposable water bottles in the National Park System, a move applauded by the bottled water industry but no doubt disappointing to reusable bottle makers and organizations trying to reduce plastic waste.