When we visited
Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah recently, we failed to make a
campground reservation. After all, it was May, surely too early for the hordes
of tourists that drive into the parks in summer. We forgot to note that we were
arriving just a few days before Memorial Day, a very popular time. (Indeed, on
Saturday the entrance to nearby Arches National Park was closed by the state police,
for the first time ever, because backed-up traffic onto the highway was so
hazardous.) So, we spent two nights out on Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
lands before scoring a campsite inside the park. Even then, only my partner’s
disabled placard made it possible. We spent three wonderful days in Canyonlands.
For such a huge
park (527 square miles), Canyonlands has surprisingly few campsites, possiby as
the result of an attempt to protect the park’s fragile desert environment. The
two campgrounds have a total of thirty-seven sites. Early every morning, RVers
and tent campers circle every loop, watching like vultures for people who are
vacating their sites. (No reservations are possible; it is a first come–first
served situation. For the elderly, getting up at dawn to drive into a park and
then compete for a site can be very difficult.) Fortunately, other campgrounds
can be found near by in Dead Horse Point State Park, the BLM’s Horsethief campground,
and other spots.
One effective way
to avoid disappointment is to travel before May 15 or after September 10, when
children are in school, and families are less likely to be on the road. Even
then, though, it is becoming harder and harder to travel and find stopping
places for the night.
In just the past
few years, national parks have become much more popular for a variety of
reasons, including Ken Burns’s TV series. As a parks enthusiast, of course I am
happy to see this trend, even if it makes my life more difficult. To be sure of
having a campsite, reservations for the most crowded places are essential.
Barbara Parker, who with her husband has been a host at one of the Yellowstone
campgrounds for several years, has written in an online RV forum about her pity
for and astonishment at people who arrive in mid-summer with no reservations
and expect to camp. They cannot stay, and it is a far, far drive out of the
park! When we went to Yellowstone (after Labor Day) a few years ago we found a
riverside spot just outside the park that had nice pit toilets, but finding it
was just dumb luck.
As we refuse to
lock ourselves into a schedule when traveling, the need for reservations is a
pain. In the West, where the BLM has vast public land areas, we can simply pull
off the road and stay overnight. There is always Wal-Mart, too. As a last
resort, private RV campgrounds are common nearly everywhere. So many of them
are either too expensive or slumlike that we scarcely ever use them.
This country’s
state and national parks still have the features that make them so appealing,
and they are the last habitats for some threatened or endangered species. What
is the solution to the crowding? Some legislators (including mine,
unfortunately) in the House of Representatives feel that more campgrounds and
other facilities (such as skating rinks) should be opened up “for the people,”
as if conservation is elitist, but I feel that would be a serious mistake. We
must preserve our parks, where much of the natural environment remains, and
where visitors can learn about archeology, paleontology, ecology, and history
in unmatched fashion. If we lose these priceless places, or convert them to
theme parks, we can never get them back. Yes, I will be irritated when it is hard
for us to find a campsite. In the long run, though, preserving the parks trumps
anyone’s personal wishes.
