here<\/a>)\u00a0reports that attendance at America\u2019s National Parks, after years of growth\u00a0to the mid-80s,\u00a0has reached a plateau and even seen a slight decline.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the key graphic:
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.static-economist.com\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/290-width\/images\/print-edition\/C\/20130817_USC189.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nFirst thought:\u00a0 we had been hoping to make next year our big \u201cout West\u201d family vacation, now that the youngest is old enough to handle\u00a0at least modest\u00a0hiking (he\u2019s 6), so after reading this article, I looked at the cost and availability of lodging.\u00a0 Want a \u201cStandard\u00a0Room \u2013 2 Queen Beds\u201d in the Old Faithful Inn for anytime next summer?\u00a0 Sorry \u2014 all sold out.\u00a0 There are small, small patches of availability for a 2 Queen Shared Bath room, and a 1 Queen Shared Bath is wide open.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Now, back when our youngest was an infant (and fairly portable in a backpack carrier) we also visited Yellowstone \u2014 but we stayed in exactly one of these 1 Queen Shared Bath rooms, and I think this was partly for price considerations, partly because everything was booked already \u2014 but this was also much closer in time to our trip.<\/p>\n
So this doesn\u2019t actually tell me \u2014 or my reader(s) \u2014 anything about changes in the last 12 years.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But my bigger gripe with this article, and with the NPS\u2019s approach, is that there is no \u201cright number\u201d of visitors.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
In the first place, the graphic above doesn\u2019t distinguish between Americans and foreign tourists, and there are plenty of reasons why the number, and country of origin,\u00a0of foreign tourists will vary.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As for Americans from minority groups, the approach of creating new \u201cnational parks\u201d with a focus on some aspect of the history of that minority group to attract them is missing the point \u2014 while technically, the government could declare any particular patch of land a \u201cnational park\u201d and then its visitors are added to the total, there is a difference between the Cesar Chavez National Monument (basically, his home and gravesite) and a stretch of land with exceptional natural features, and whether or not one visits Cesar Chavez\u2019s gravesite doesn\u2019t have anything to do with the broader question of whether younger Americans are more attached to technology than nature, so that combining the visitor counts isn\u2019t meaningful, just self-serving, if the NPS needs to increase its visitor counts for their own sake.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Are younger Americans less likely to visit the great natural national parks?\u00a0 Is this part and parcel of a declining interest in the natural world?\u00a0\u00a0Or is it due to the increasing cost of long-distance travel, with the increase in gas prices?\u00a0 Or is it due to the combination of a perception by younger people that driving a scenic route is lame, yet at the same time hiking that route is only for serious outdoor enthusiasts?\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Economist (in this week\u2019s print edition, and online here)\u00a0reports that attendance at America\u2019s National Parks, after years of growth\u00a0to the mid-80s,\u00a0has reached a plateau and even seen a slight decline.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the key graphic: First thought:\u00a0 we had been hoping to make next year our big \u201cout West\u201d family vacation, now that the youngest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[196],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-national-parks"],"yoast_head":"\n
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