According to the LA Times California’s incompetent lame-duck governor who threatened to close most state parks, later backed off and only wanted to close some, and eventually played a huge cut in park funding as a positive thing…
“… will be honored Oct. 29 with the National Park Trust’s Bruce F. Vento Public Service Award in [...]
A Tom Stienstra piece at SFGate reminded me about a September truth: at just the time when fewer and fewer people head to the outdoors, the outdoors is becoming a more and more attractive place to be in many ways.
School is (mostly) back in session and after this Labor Day Weekend (which the news reports [...]
Earlier this week I spent a few days in the Ten Lakes Basin area of Yosemite National Park. Although I’ve backpacked widely in the high country of the park over the past years – OK, decades… – this was actually the very first time that I visited this popular backpacking destination. I think I had [...]
Starting about this time of year, many of us outdoor types are susceptible to speculations about the upcoming winter weather. Most of us are looking for something “interesting” – as in record-breaking rain/snow, an unusually early start to the season, and so forth.
Those who enjoy the seasonal speculation will appreciate the reports that El Niño [...]
I spent the weekend shuttling around areas ranging from Yosemite Valley to Mono Lake to Mariposa grove. The story is posted at my photography web site.
The Governator of California, among a number of other bizarre recent “decisions” has recommend closing almost all California State Parks. This is just plain nuts for a whole bunch of reasons. (How do you close a public park? how do you protect the parks from vandals and marijuana growers and off-road vehicles? What happens to [...]
Despite the concerns about low rainfall this year in parts of California, there are some hopeful signs of a decent and perhaps even quite good spring wildflower bloom. A few notes:
I have visited Muir Woods twice during the past few weeks (some photos at my other site) and last weekend spectacular trillium flowers were just [...]
Today, for the first time in almost a year, I heard the sound of running water during my hike in the Calero Hills. Here in dry California that is a special thing!
This afternoon I headed over to Big Basin for a few hours of hiking and photography. (This evening it occurred to me that I’m, well, lucky to be able to drive a bit more than an hour and hike among coastal redwoods.) I arrived at the park in the early afternoon to find that a) [...]
Drive to Fix California State Park Funding
A Tom Stienstra article at SF Gate reviews an initiative to fix the gross funding problems with California State Parks. The governor and the legislature have used this California legacy as a gambling chip for the past couple of years, and it has to stop. The parks are too valuable to the state in so [...]