$70 to visit Mount Rainier, Olympic parks? Agency says fee hike would ease work backlog

[icymist]

A visit to see Mount Rainier’s wildflowers or Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rain Forest might set you back $70 in 2018.

And you still can’t pick the flowers.

That’s the plan the National Park Service is considering during high visit months at those and 15 other national parks. The NPS is targeting the most popular parks at the most popular times.

...Reaction to the proposal was swift.

...“We should not increase fees to such a degree as to make these places — protected for all Americans to experience — unaffordable for some families to visit,” said Theresa Pierno, the group’s president. “The solution to our parks’ repair needs cannot and should not be largely shouldered by its visitors.”

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article180651396.html

[Ilsa]

1. I pay a little more for any/all state parks

where we live for an entire year, for however many are in the car.

$70 is obscene.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Yup,can't be having those Poor folk

messing up the Scenery. Got's ta make room for them oversized Mortorhomes and them Tourist Buss. Priority job one.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. A lot of national parks get more visitors than they can really accommodate.

I don't know enough to suggest solutions.

I can tell you that I visited the Grand Canyon in 1964, then again in about 1998. The first time was great. We camped near the rim, attended Ranger Lectures, had a great time. I do not recall if there was a fee to attend.

The second time was with my young sons. We took the train from Williams, AZ to the Grand Canyon, had about three hours up there and it was great. One thing a tour guide mentioned was (and he gave exact figures which I no longer recall) was that at least three times as many cars as there were parking spaces for showed up each day.

In 2014 I made another trip there, again taking the train from Williams. By that time no private cars were allowed along the rim. Instead they have free busses along the rim. There are three or four separate routes. It's wonderful. While the canyon in midsummer, when I was there, is quite busy, it wasn't a hell of people desperately searching for parking.

I can only hope that similar solutions, other than raising fees, can be found.

And as a senior citizen, I do hope that my senior pass will still get me in everywhere.

[lunasun]

4. That's not a fair way to keep down the crowding