From the category archives:

National Parks and Monuments

Online National Parks Holiday Cards

December 9, 2009

If you usually send out holiday cards, but are concerned about the carbon footprint of sending hundreds of letters through the mail — or are just too lazy this year — you’ll be happy to know the National Parks Conservation Association has you covered.
The nonprofit organization is offering ten images of National Parks with various [...]

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Yosemite Roads Closed for Winter

December 3, 2009

Just an FYI for anyone who was thinking of heading up to Yosemite soon – both Glacier Point Road and Tioga Road have been closed for the winter this week, meaning you will no longer be able to enter the park from the Eastern Sierras or access the northern half of the park on Tioga [...]

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Public Comment on World War II NPS Historic Sites

November 30, 2009

This Thursday and Friday, the National Park Service will hold listening sessions in Los Angeles and San Francisco to take public comments about its grand program for preserving World War II-era Japanese Internment sites.
I know it’s not technically hiking news, but I had the opportunity to visit Manzanar National Historic Site this year on the [...]

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Free Admission to National Parks

November 9, 2009

If you’re lucky enough to be able to take time off of work in the middle of the week, you may want to head outdoors … even more so than you usually would.
This Wednesday, in honor of Veterans’ Day, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be waiving entrance fees on public recreation lands managed [...]

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The Ken Burns Effect

October 1, 2009

… and no, not the built-in photo-dissolving technique in iMovie … but rather, the positive effect Ken Burns’ documentary series has already been having on attention paid toward the National Park System — and I’m not just talking about all my Twitter friends finally coming to realize how awesome John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt were.
Recently, [...]

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Pre-Sale and Discount on National Parks Box Set

September 23, 2009

The PBS store announced today it would be offering a 20% discount on all their Ken Burns paraphernalia, in preparation of the new National Parks series that’s just around the corner.
The storefront is accepting pre-orders for the new doc series, which will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on October 6th. For your completists [...]

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Ken Burns’ Companion Film Screening

September 11, 2009

San Gabriel Mountains Forever, one of the groups pushing for increased Federal protection in the San Gabriel Mountains, will be screening Ken Burns’ “This is America,” a 45 minute companion film to his upcoming 6-part documentary series on the National Parks.
The free screening will take place on Wednesday, September 16th at the Broad Performance Space [...]

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Ken Burns’ Return

September 1, 2009

With almost two months left until it hits the airwaves, Ken Burns is starting the publicity circuit for his new series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”
Backpacker posted a short but spirited interview with the award-winning documentarian, and was kind enough to share it on YouTube. He provides a bit of background on the [...]

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Wild Exposure

August 13, 2009

Marketing exec-turned nature photographer Ian Shrive has been touring our National Park System and – thankfully – taking lots of pictures.
He’s working on a new book of photography and – thankfully – took a videographer along with him on his travels.
2 videos of his trip are up so far – one highlighting some of the [...]

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Yosemite Explorer

August 11, 2009

… so one of the other things I did after I got home from that Islip hike was to book a camp site in Yosemite in a few weeks, as part of a planned Yosemite-Bodie-Mono Lake-Devil’s Postpile-Manzanar trip. I haven’t been to Yosemite in years, and I’m really looking forward to just kicking back [...]

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