> I think it'd be great to encourage kids to visit the parks through passes like these. Sponsor a lottery/giveaway or a contest featuring children's park-themed art or creative writing as chances to win lifetime park passes for them and their family.

It’s a great idea, and if you’re one of the people here making SV tech salaries, you could make that happen tomorrow. You’re talking about $5000-10000 of direct philanthropy to run/promote the contest and buy those passes for the winner. Media coverage would come easy and you could get it to snowball through other contributors after driving it through the first time.

(Not being flippant. Sometimes people just need help seeing what they can actually make happen without too much trouble.)

Money is cheap, it's time that's expensive... I don't have any experience here, but my intuition is that organizing and executing the event with appropriate bureaucratic signoff, managing PR, reviewing all the candidates (in a fair and unbiased manner), etc... sounds like weeks of effort spanning months, no?

Think more hackathon project than startup.

Philanthropically, people do this scale of stuff for their own communities all the time. In the arts, people stand up and run themed contests every day.

There is absolutely time to be invested in designing or approving whatever online presence, reviewing submissions, becoming comfortable with whatever legal requirements, etc — but that’s the part that makes it a memorable life experience, not unlike the time spent on that trip to Belize or in those woodshop classes.

How interested are you? If you or someone you know can provide the money, I bet I can find someone in the parks service, or a close connection, to handle the bureaucratic side of it. (I was an environmental science undergrad, and we frequently worked with the NPS and similar entities. Culturally it's very different from the tech world; they are often budget-starved for things but can make time for events and such.)

I have done small philantrophic projects with 5-6 people and doing it with a team helped a lot

I imagine you could send the money and idea to Amplifier[0] and have them run that for you

[0] https://amplifier.org/

Individual parks often do contests like that, for example https://www.nps.gov/shen/youth-wildflower-art-contest.htm and https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/kidsyouth/student-poetry-cont....

There are also free passes specifically for 4th graders (and their families) for some reason: https://everykidoutdoors.gov/index.htm

> for some reason

Edit: I was sort of right, but I found this on the website:

“We chose fourth graders because research shows that kids ages 9 to 11 are beginning to learn about the world around them. They're open to new ideas, and they are likely to connect to nature and our history,”

Original answer:

5th grade is the year that students learn about US History. I think the theory is that they get a chance to see the national parks before they learn about them in 5th grade.

And for those wanting a bit more complexity is the 2023 worker placement game "Trailblazer - John Muir Trail": https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/307044/trailblazer-john-...

I personally really enjoyed that game, and some reviewers have described it as "What Parks should've been"

Thanks for this. "Parks" was disappointing.

For kids, all 4 graders can get a free pass. That program has been in place for a while and we got it for all my kids, but it doesn't seem to be really well known. But we definitely hit more parks those years, and the kids enjoyed being the one who owned the pass and getting to show it at each entrance.

As a Canadian it’s one of the things I envy most about the United States. The park system is amazing and so vast. Canada has a lot of parks (3.3% of the land vs 3.6% for the USA) and some are great, and perhaps it’s a result of me going to wrong Canadian parks and the right US parks, but they don’t seem as good here in Canada. They also seem to be predominately north where fewer people are. The majority of them are in places I will never go, along with most Canadians.

Canada is beautiful. I guess I just wish more of the parks were accessible and well-supported by our government, in the same way US parks seem to be.

Well, there's Banff and Jasper (and other nearby parks) which I visited with my wife quite a while ago. We're Californians. And Stanley Park in Vancouver is very accessible.

I’m partial to US parks as well, having visited many of them across the country. But Canada has some truly amazing parks like Banff or places like Lake Louise that are world beating.

Yeah, you’re not wrong. There are some parks that are basically in my back yard that you couldn’t explore in a life time. I don’t mean to sound bitter or unappreciative at all. If anything I just want more of it for everyone.

My personal favourite is strathcona park on Vancouver Island. My family spends summers and winters there. The geology is incredible, and you can find heaps of fossils in some areas. The lakes are stunning and cool throughout summer. The alpine areas are breathtaking. You really couldn’t see it all in a lifetime. I can’t think of a better thing to have a few hours away.

Looks like the art from those games - which really is quite stunning - is available directly as posters, an art book, and more (although not until next month, I guess): https://59parks.net/

> We are fortunate to have them and helping disabled people take advantage of the parks is an excellent idea.

Joseph Sax is rolling in his grave.

>"Joseph Sax is rolling in his grave."

Could you please elaborate, I don't know anything about Joseph Sax, and his Wikipedia entry doesn't contain anything that explains your comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Sax

He wrote a famous book called Mountains Without Handrails:

https://www.amazon.com/Mountains-Without-Handrails-Reflectio...

It's been 20 years since I read it, but iirc he is musing about whether things like paving the trails around Niagara falls to make them handicap accessible diminishes our ability to be awed by the natural experience.

I may well be mischaracterizing it, so if you want to read it yourself the whole thing appears to be online here:

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sax/contents.ht...

The thing is that like 90% of national park visitors will never venture more than a half mile from their car. We should be making the experience as accessible as possible for those visitors while also preserving the vast majority of the open space for backcountry users.

The Paradise Visitor Center at Mt Rainier does a nice job striking this balance. Visitors can get an excellent view of the mountain by driving to the parking lot. There is a paved path to a popular waterfall. Beyond that, hikers can have a more typical trail hiking experience and by the time you are about 4-5 miles from the parking lot, it's a proper wilderness experience.

The problem is national parks have a vendetta against dogs. I love out of my car with my dog. If a place doesn’t allow dogs, it doesn’t allow me.

Granted, I prefer BLM, FWS, and FS land anyways. But don’t forget that NPS adamantly excludes whole classes of people.

High traffic nature areas are ruined by selfish dog owners. My favorite is spring on my local trails when every time you go out you get to enjoy progressively more dog poop revealed right on the side of the trail as the snow recedes.

With the volume of visitors popular National parks see there wouldn’t 50ft of path free of dog poop even if they went out of their way to mitigate it.

Ah yes, the ol’ “some people can’t behave, so everyone of their ilk must be discriminated against” approach.

Instead, I’d recommend requiring dogs be accompanied by a dedicated shit-carrying pack and bags sufficient for it. Similar to how humans are required to have bear canisters in some parts. (indeed some places require humans to carry shit bags for themselves!)

Let's not pretend that we're discriminating against a class of people with some immutable characteristic. Having a dog is a choice. Are you entitled to bring your pet into Mesa Verde? Obviously no.

As I’ve said, I’m homeless. Is that a choice? Kinda. Is having a dog a choice? Kinda. But I wouldn’t be alive without her.

Given those two things, I am basically 100% prohibited from using National Parks. Am I entitled to them? Maybe not. But still kinda sucks that I cannot use them through no fault of my own and people like you justify it by pointing out bad actors who have nothing to do with me.

I’m empathetic to responsible dog ownership and your situation. It does suck that you’re precluded from some experiences as a result of the selfish actions of others.

I’m not the type who thinks dogs have zero place in nature. I was happy to see a dog summiting a rocky scramble at 13000 ft just the other week. I plan on adopting this coming spring and am acutely aware of how it will affect my ability to travel and plan outings.

I responded, maybe too bluntly, because I felt your language including words like discrimination was heavy handed and you did not even allude to the absolutely Herculean task the NPS faces when trying to balance accessibility and conservation in nature areas that see millions of visitors every season.

I hope you and your pup enjoy the winter. We just got our first big snow up here in the rockies.

I've been to plenty of national parks with my dog. The rules are generally that dogs must be on-leash, and they are not allowed in especially sensitive areas. Those rules make a lot of sense to me.

The NPS hardly has a vendetta against dogs. At Carlsbad Cavern they even had a free kennel facility so you can visit the caves without worrying about leaving your dog in a hot car.

Every one I’ve seen only allows dogs on paved trails. Which is basically just the roads.

Not sure where you are, but the southwest tends to have pretty dog friendly policies. Sand Dunes, White Sands, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest (these are just ones I’ve been to off the top of my head) all allow pets on trails with some minor limitations: e.g. Pets only allowed on rim in Grand Canyon.

Pretty easy to google a list of dog friendly parks.

Alright I guess we just have different ideas of “minor limitations”. Being able to use only a single (paved) trail in the entire park sounds like a pretty major limitation to me.

Regardless, I much prefer BLM and Forest Service land. Free as in freedom, free as in beer. National Parks are fantastic for the disabled and (petless) families, but that’s about it as far as I can tell.

Those who appreciate the raw outdoors will know that National Parks are best compared to amusement parks. Family friendly, tons of rules and regulations you must follow, expensive, but granted: some really cool vistas too.

Much better is BLM land, US Forest Service land, and (sometimes) US Fish and Wildlife Service land. Free, generally unregulated, vast, and exceedingly beautiful in its own right.

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sax/chap6.htm in particular:

> One does not provide such an opportunity for older people or inexperienced visitors by building a highway to the top of a mountain. Rather we can assure that places that are accessible to them are not so deprived of their natural qualities as to put such an experience beyond their reach.

which suggests that he'd be fine with things like the pass program.

It's not really possible in today's austere political climate, but I think the parks should be free for everyone. Especially as entrance passes to many parks are already rationed, the economic benefits of continuing to charge are relatively small.

Ignorance here, I thought the entrance/camping costs went to park maintenance and services. That has to be a non-trivial amount?

My understanding is that’s exactly why access is not unlimited.

Interestingly during the pandemic some Nevada state parks moved to a mandatory pass pre-purchase system as a way to control the number of people in the park at a given time to aid in infection control and prevention. Nevada has some truly gorgeous state parks that are more akin to BLM managed land than NPS land. (To me, it’s all beautiful.)