Opening up the parks

balzaccom

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There is a huge effort being put into opening up professional sports during the Covid19 crisis. Many of the arguments in favor of opening up the games center around the many employees of the stadiums, and how they depend on revenue from the games.

So. I did a little research. About 17 million fans attend NFL games each year. Another 22 million attend NBA games. And Major League Baseball attracts nearly 70 million fans to the stadiums each year.

Wow, you must be thinking. That’s a lot.

Do you know many people visit our national parks each year? Over 300 million—about three times the number that attend NFL, MLB and NBA games combined each year. Another 800 million visit the various state parks throughout the country. Between state and national parks, ten times as many people visit those as attend all professional sports games in the USA.

Of course, our president doesn’t watch our national parks on television, so that must explain why our parks don’t get as much attention…sigh.
 
No I think it is because states have control of closing a d opening.. all different. They are abiding by the state. Example.... Yellowstone will be open for Wyoming entrances.. not Montana ones, cause Montana is still drinking around with clisure
 
Some of the state parks I visit have opened, and most, in some cases ALL, of the campsites are reserved(go back to work, people!).
It's going to rain all week. Practically none of those people are actually going to be there, so the parks are going to be open and empty, but I still can't get a backcountry site at the place I was thinking of going!
That's ok, 'cause I'll be somewhere else that's open, empty, and doesn't have reserved sites, but I thought it was pretty ironic.
 
Trump has been pushing for them to open over a month. It’s small town health officials that wanted them closed, and demanded they stay closed while they prepared for how to handle the hordes of virus infected tourists.

Such preparations boiling down to pushing their local residents to the verge of bankruptcy via lockdown and turning away all visitors while apparently hoping the virus would disappear by magic.

Those preparations are now complete, so many of the parks are reopening as you can see. Thanks to the wisdom and foresight of their local leadership, adjacent towns now get to enjoy the inevitable spread of the virus that flattening the curve only delayed for everyone and get to do so while under the added stress of pending financial ruin.

To increase the odds of the latter, experts (in Colorado at least) are urging visitors to buy all supplies, food and gas at home so as not to spend any money in these towns while traveling through to visit the parks. This is critical and for their own good.

It’s all worked out. Pro sports haven’t even figured out how to play game 1.
 
@Wanderlust073 I always appreciate your candor, but I can't help to quibble a bit with your characterization of the situation. Trump did indeed say during Earth Day/National Parks Week celebration that he wanted to see the parks open.

Continuing through the rest of the article one can see that there were real organizational problems at Interior at the start of this whole thing, at least partially caused by reduction of management there. From the beginning though, even Interior wanted closures and management to be a park by park decision. It wasn't crazy yokel local health officials demanding anything, or if they were they were demanding things in line with Interior's priorities.

You are absolutely right that there are enormous economic issues at stake, but I think characterizing rural health concerns in a trite matter misrepresents the honest concern about rural health facilities handling the situation. Especially near the beginning of all this when uncertainty in decision making was high. Rural health care infrustructure in the US is an absolute embarrassment.

It is easy and fun to think that local buffoons or buffoons at Interior screwed this all up for us. I honestly think they've done all right considering the hollowed out management at Interior, delayed and sometimes foolish local and federal responses, and high uncertainty in early Spring makes for difficult policy making.

P.S.. @Wanderlust I've been enjoying your South San Juan's recently while the Northern NM forests are a bit crowded. Nice place you guys got there :thumbsup: The Conejos really makes me want to learn how to fly fish.

good luck everyone.
 
I disagree. I don’t think I’ve mischaracterized anything, and the impetus for the closures (at least in CO) came from adjacent counties. You can look up the letters they sent to NPS asking them to shut down RMNP and Sand Dunes. DOI didn’t play a role in it.

If shutting down the parks was warranted, what steps were taken between then and now to take advantage of the window of opportunity in which to prepare?

- increase local medical facilities?
- increase local medical staff?
- secure additional medical supplies?
- provide all businesses with ppe for interacting with public?

None of that was done. What could have been done anyway?

Literally the only difference in the situation between March 1 and May 19 is the financial catastrophe that wasn’t there before and is absolutely there now. Local pub health officials are not dolts but, same as anyone, their expertise is confined to a very limited area and witness the carnage of unconsidered/unexpected consequences that lies outside it.

Glad you’re enjoying the San Juans. I risk tickets/fines if I try to venture in to the mountains, and that assumes the roads to the trailheads have not been roadblocked by local sheriffs per orders of town/county health boards...
 
Glad you’re enjoying the San Juans. I risk tickets/fines if I try to venture in to the mountains, and that assumes the roads to the trailheads have not been roadblocked by local sheriffs per orders of town/county health boards...

Clear Creek County probably. San Juan County for sure. The rest not so much. None of these people reported being fined or ticketed. You have valid points but are overdoing this one. Screenshot from https://www.14ers.com/index.php?interface=fullScreenshot (20).png
 
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Maybe things have eased up some. I got tired of getting more and more aggravated over it so I just stopped reading after Gilpin blocked off access to Golden Gate Canyon State Park.

Worst case, our plan for buying property further west in the state is probably going to come off a lot cheaper now...
 
Im a little confused because, while yes, Alamosa county requested closure for Sand Dunes , the superintendent agreed as well, DOI was clearly involved. Anyway I can agree that in the interim we've done too little to prepare for inevitable opening, and haven't done enough with the time we've bought.

Imposition of a fine under these circumstances seems totally whack to me. It sucks your locality has chosen to go that direction.

Good news is Rocky Mountain Region of FS removed their total campground closure and fire ban for the region, and it is now a forest by forest decision. Openings. And more info from later in the week.

Still lots of fire restrictions; who knows what will happen there with this years potential fire season.
 
Sure DOI/NPS agreed to the request - that's not quite the same as initiating the request - ? If I demand you turn your music down and you agree to do so, that doesn't mean you were part of making the demand in the first place. :p

I can't find Alamosa's request anymore (though to quote the NPS site "in response to a request from the Alamosa County Public Health Department. ... will be closed to all park visitors until further notice"), here's Larimer's though.


Anyway, aggravation level already max'd out again from thinking about it, lol. At 4:30am it just struck me as funny thing to pin on Trump so I caved in and replied to the thread. o_O:coffee:o_O
 
Look farther west... Wy, Id
 
Estes Park was definitely heavily involved in getting Rocky Mountain National Park closed and for the reasons listed. RMNP was one of the first in the state, if not the first in the state to close. Ironically Grand Lake has been saying, but we didn't request this...

It's easy to look back in hindsight and see what should have been done. But truthfully, no one knew how serious this was, or could be. We still really don't, but I'd far rather people err on the side of caution than not.
 
The housing market in GJ is going crazy right now....we listed our house yesterday and got a full-priced offer in a couple of hours.

Do you know anything about the buyers? I'm curious b/c a lot the Bay Area tech crowd is on indefinite work from home. A number of my outdoorsy coworkers are looking into moving/buying in more remote locations to take advantage of remote work.
 
Do you know anything about the buyers? I'm curious b/c a lot the Bay Area tech crowd is on indefinite work from home. A number of my outdoorsy coworkers are looking into moving/buying in more remote locations to take advantage of remote work.

No, I don't know who is buying right now? All I know is houses are selling fast around here right now.
 
No, I don't know who is buying right now? All I know is houses are selling fast around here right now.
It’s been crazy for a while and there might have been a slight hiccup but not much. We looked at one place in early April that was listed on a Friday, we looked at it on Saturday midday at it already had eight offers. We ended up closing on a new place in the Redlands late April with the plan of renting our current place out in Fruita...I was kinda freaked out about it but seems like the rental market is still nuts too.
 
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