Essential Park Guide Fall 2018

Inside Essential Park Guide / Fall 2018

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Enter The Underworld

By Kurt Repanshek There are portals around the National Park System that will lead you into fascinating realms of discovery...if you dare to go.

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A New Perspective On An Old River

By Patrick Cone A new story is evolving around an historic spot along the Mississippi River, one that flows with the pulse of the river.

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Helping Hands From Friends Connecting youth with nature, curating the past, keeping kids healthy, and preserving landscapes are some of the things these friends do best.

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Into Africa

By Mark Hendricks Avoid running over goats and other wisdom from our correspondent’s self-guided photo safari of Tanzania’s national parks.

On The Road

By Kurt Repanshek This easy loop tour of western South Dakota connects you with badlands, bison, grottos, and presidents.

Return Of The “Supercolonies”

By Erika Zambello Has 2018 signaled a permanent return to the years when super colonies of birds flocked to the Everglades to nest? Stay tuned.

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A Life-Saving Corridor

By Erika Zambello In a bid to counter development, a group is working, parcel-by-parcel, to establish a corridor flora and fauna can travel north and south along the Eastern Seaboard.

Some Good Reviews Reading nature, waterfalls in the Virginias, fire lookouts and campfire stories are just some of the subjects of books that found Traveler’s mailbox.

EDITOR: Kurt Repanshek ART DIRECTOR: Courtney Cooper SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR: Patrick Cone SENIOR EDITOR: Scott Johnson CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Hendricks Rebecca Latson Erika Zambello PUBLISHED BY

Essential Park Guides are published by National Parks Traveler to showcase how best to enjoy and explore the National Park System. National Parks Traveler, P.O. Box 980452, Park City, Utah, 84098. ©2018 Essential Park Guide, Fall 2018. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

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•••• from the publisher

A Walk Through The Dark Side Of The Park System

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here is a dark underside to the National Park System, and it is one of the most wondrous settings you’ll find. It features crystals, walls of “popcorn,” waterfalls, and streams akin to the mythical River Styx.

There are chambers that could accommodate an orchestra, walls of dazzling marble, and slabs of “bacon.”

From Kentucky to coastal California, from the Great Lakes to southern New Mexico, caves worm their way beneath the park system.

If you believe that the night sky is the “other half,” of the park system, well, then perhaps you should reduce that to a third and give the underbelly a third, too, with the surface landscape claiming the remaining third.

My interest in caves came years ago while squirming on belly, knees, and elbows through

ON THE COVER Stay observant and you won’t even need to leave your car for a great wildlife shot, as Rebecca Latson found when she spied this sage grouse while exploring Grand Teton National Park.

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Mammoth Cave National Park on a wild cave tour.

While I didn’t arrive at the right season to explore Wind Cave National Park or Jewel Cave National Monument on their wild cave adventures when I visited earlier this year, I did get to experience their normal tour route wonders and was not disappointed.

Along with describing those adventures beginning on page 5, we’ve created on pages 10-13 charts of cave systems around the National Park System for use in plotting your own underworld treks. As a bonus for those thinking of visiting the South Dakota cave parks, we’ve outlined a road trip through that state and its national parks beginning on page 33.

There are, of course, more stories to the park system.

Erika Zambello brings two to this issue with a look at the amazing wading bird nesting season Everglades National

Park witnessed early this year, along with a piece on efforts to preserve a “wildlands corridor” for plant and animal species along the Eastern Seaboard.

Special Projects Editor Patrick Cone found himself in Minnesota this summer, and returned home with a look at efforts to transform the historic Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam system at the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area into a more visitor friendly location.

And, as part of Traveler’s commitment to explore national parks and protected areas the world over, Mark Hendricks explains what you can experience with a self-supported photography safari through some of Tanzania’s national parks. His story begins on page 26.

Sit back travelers, enjoy their stories, and then start planning your own adventures.

— Kurt Repanshek

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Share how you experience our national parks by posting your favorite vacation story or sharing a photo. Join in the conversation and keep up-to-date on park news around the country.

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Going Underground At Wind Cave And Jewel Cave

By Kurt Repanshek

NationalParksTraveler.org

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By drips and weeps over thousands, if not millions, of years, beauty is created underground. Here in the subterranean world the moist air and mineral-rich water create castles, not in the sky, but in the caves of the National Park System.

Above: There is a lot more of Wind Cave than what visitors encounter on the normal tour routes. Cave explorers discover fascinating formations deep within the lower reaches of the cave / ŠDave Bunnell, Under Earth Images Right: Jewel Cave National Monument harbors what is thought to be the world’s greatest collection of dogtooth spar / NPS

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here are sparkling white nodules, wafer-thin balloons, mineral straws, and slabs of bacon (well, at least it looks like bacon). These are the speleothems; the decorations of the underworld. They are fashioned over time by minerals deposited from water droplets dangling from ceilings, splashing to the floor, or simply carried on air currents and accumulated by chance in frost-like forms.

“Every drip of water you hear today is creating something else,” Ranger Ken says just before he turns the lights out on us in one of the chambers along Jewel Cave National Monument’s Scenic Tour. “As you look around, you

can see the impact of every drip of water.”

While these creations are lost in the total darkness that is the norm in caves, they come shimmering to life for us when some light shines on them. When the ranger turns the lights back on, orange, yellow, and white “soda straws” point down at me from the ceiling. Across the cave, dark brown flowstone coats a rock shelf, appearing like melting chocolate ice cream, or icing in search of a cake.

Before I joined the 90-minute public cave tour, Mike Wiles, the national monument’s resident geologist and master caver, took me along the Scenic Tour route to better explain the geology and the work being done to protect the cave and its formations.

“We are inside a geode,” Wiles told me, referring to the spherical rock nodules that, when cracked open, often are filled with colorful crystal displays. And that makes sense.

In a passage not far from the Target Room the walls are covered with countless nodules of what’s called cave popcorn.

Geologically speaking, the nodules are “corallites,” formed by the deposition of calcium carbonate. A little further down the path, we encounter a quarter- to half-inchthin 20-foot-long vertical slab of cave bacon.

Illuminated from behind, you can see the striking stripes of color that do indeed make this formation resemble an enormous slice of bacon.

Frank and Albert Michaud thought the formations they spied in 1900 through the cave’s historic entrance might bring them riches, and filed the “Jewel Tunnel Lode” mining claim. While the calcite creations were not valuable in their own right, the brothers turned the cave into a tourist attraction. They were ahead of their time, though; tourism of the cave didn’t take off as they envisioned. In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt designated it as a national monument, and soon thereafter the federal government bought out the brothers and placed Jewel Cave under control of the U.S. Forest Service, which turned it over to the National Park Service in 1933.

Across the park system, there are many more caves than you might imagine. From Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Timpanogos in Utah, to Sequoia National Park’s Crystal Cave in California, and Oregon Caves in, well, Oregon, these voids are vast geology lessons that hold you in wonder of the planet.

How did they form? How large are they?

Will they collapse on me? Does anything live in these cool, dark places?

The answers to these questions can be just as varied and complex as the caves themselves. Though Jewel Cave National Monument and Wind Cave National Park are

separated by fewer than 20 miles in South Dakota’s Black Hills, to the casual observer they may as well be 1,000 miles apart.

Jewel Cave practically shimmers with the world’s greatest concentration of bright white dogtooth spar, colorful soda straws, flowstone and cave bacon. The main speleothems along the Natural Entrance Tour at Wind Cave are potato-chip-fragile honeycomb joints known as boxwork that were created when the surrounding limestone and dolomite weathered away. Nowhere else in the world, it’s said, can you find such an assemblage of boxwork.

It took tens of millions of years for these two caves to form. They were created not by rushing rivers of surface water that found a crack in the Madison Limestone formation (known to locals as Pahasapa Limestone), but rather by the shifting currents of ground water that dissolved away the limestone.

“At all times, the cave is completely filled with water, so it’s all happening under the water table by circulating water,” Wiles said in describing the setting tens of millions of years ago. “As far as we know at this point, we never had a stream flowing through the cave. It was underwater as it was being formed, and then it got to the point where the water stopped flowing, or circulating, and then drained away slowly.”

Jewel Cave is the world’s third longest cave, but efforts throughout the year to discover new passages continue to extend its reach / ©Dave Bunnell, Under Earth Images

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The Scenic Tour, the most popular of Jewel Cave’s tours, shows off cave popcorn, flowstones, soda straws, and cave bacon while providing great interpretation of the cave / Kurt Repanshek

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As the water drained, calcium carbonate settled out, which created the wonders that draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to these two caves each year.

As for the differences in the caves’ speleothems, Wiles said, that likely had to do with the limestone bed at Wind Cave being thinner, sandier, and more fractured than the one in which Jewel Cave formed.

I traveled to South Dakota in late May to explore these two cave systems. Well, as much as I was allowed to and was capable of handling. More physically fit volunteer spelunkers with much more caving experience head down into these systems, usually for four days at a time. They shuffle along on elbows and knees while pushing gear ahead of them, beams from their headlamps bouncing off the

rock walls, floors, and ceilings.

These are the few who “push” the length of these caves by finding, and measuring, new passages. While Jewel Cave is recognized as the world’s third longest cave (with nearly 200 miles mapped), Wind Cave ranks sixth, with 148 miles charted as of this June.

“Right now, it’s kind of all directions,” Marc Ohms, a physical scientist at Wind Cave, replied when asked where these volunteers are exploring. “We call it the edge of the cave, which is on all corners, and we’re trying to find a way to break out of the known footprint of the cave. We haven’t been able to do that in a long time.

So we’re pushing the edges of the known footprint to see if we can get through.”

There is a possibility that Wind Cave and Jewel Cave are connected. “We know there’s enough volume for the two caves to be connected,” said Wiles. “But that doesn’t mean they are.”

For years a German researcher, Andreas Pflitsch, has been using ultrasonic anemometers to measure airflows in and out of both Jewel Cave and Wind Cave. With those measurements and physics—the Ideal Gas Law, specifically—he calculated the volume of the caves. Those calculations indicate that only about 3 percent of Jewel Cave’s passages have been explored, and only about 10 percent of Wind Cave.

If so, mapping the entire cave won’t happen any time soon, as volunteers manage to extend the cave’s length by only about 2-3 miles a year, and some passages that allow air to flow would likely be too tight for a crawling human.

What is known from Dr. Pflitsch’s work is that under the right climatic conditions—extreme low pressure—the airflow exiting Wind Cave from a small crevice that betrayed the cave’s existence has reached 70 mph.

In 1881 two cowboys, Jesse and Tom Bingham, found the portal while out deer hunting. Since then, the urge to explore the passageways has grown steadily. In Jewel Cave, explorers have also worked to see how far the netherworld extends.

“We’re going where the cave will let us, wherever we can find. I do think there are cave passages that extend in that distance (toward Jewel Cave),” Ohms said. “If we can actually fit through, some day we may actually find out. But right now, the caves are 18 miles, as the crow flies, apart. That sounds close when you’re talking about two cave systems with over 300 miles combined, people say you must be close.

“Wind Cave right now fits under one square mile of land surface,” he pointed out.

“And Jewel Cave barely three miles of land

New passages in the two caves are sought, explains Jewel Cave’s Mike Wiles, because “you can’t take care of things you don’t know.”/ ©Dave Bunnell, Under Earth Images

surface, so we’re not even close to each other.

To get to the far ends of our cave would take about eight hours, and over in Jewel Cave it would take even longer to get to the end. So, physically, we’re going to need more entrances in between if we’re ever going to push that far.”

While the Lakota tribe considers Wind Cave sacred, there has been no evidence that they ever entered it. Europeans didn’t hesitate.

In the 1930s, Civilian Conservation Corps crews built the elevators down into the cave, installed electricity, and built stairways by draping tire inner tubes filled with concrete over their shoulders and carrying them deep into the cave for pours.

“It took them nine years to finish everything,” Ranger Christine told those on the Natural Entrance Tour I joined the day before visiting Jewel Cave. “All the staircases, and elevators.”

Both caves offer a variety of tours.

At Wind Cave, in addition to the Natural Entrance Tour, you can explore other sections via the Garden of Eden Tour (recommended for those with little time), the Fairgrounds Tour (the most strenuous at Wind Cave, and showing off the most cave features of all the park’s tours), the Candlelight Tour (also strenuous and with some off-trail travel, lim-

ited to visitors 8 and older), and the Wild Cave Tour (an adventure for those who don’t mind squirming around on hands, elbows and knees, and over 16 years old).

At Jewel Cave, along with the Scenic Tour that is offered year-round, you can journey into the cave by flickering light on the Historic Lantern Tour, or get a quick sample via the 20-minute Discovery Talk, which takes you into the Target Room.

Which cave is for you? Both. Because they are so close together, and because they offer

Found far from the public routes through the cave are curious, bush-like growths called helictites that likely were coated with calcium carbonate when water filled the cave / NPS

such different geologic experiences, you’d be disappointed to miss either.

Away from the general public’s cave tours, both Jewel Cave and Wind Cave contain passages that lead to “lakes,” areas where the water table meets the passageways, and odd formations.

“Probably one of the more unique (formations) is called a helectite bush,” said Ohms.

“It looks like a bush. It looks like something that was living at one time, and I do think it probably was. I think it was made of bacteria, or maybe algae that was living when the cave was underwater in those sections. And then got covered with calcite.”

While the formations haven’t been studied deeply, yet, Ohms did say they were unique to Wind Cave.

“We haven’t seen them anywhere else in the world. And the tallest one is 6-foot tall, and down to a few inches. So they range quite a bit.

But they’re only found in this cave,” he said.

“They were formed under the groundwater table in very slow moving water, virtually almost stagnant.”

The next day, while joining Wiles underground at Jewel Cave, we paused in a passage to admire some of the speleothems, and I asked what the point is of seeking new stretches of cave in the two parks.

“The bottom line is curiosity,” he said. “This is a park, where the primary resource is undiscovered. You can’t take care of the things you don’t know about.”

Caption NationalParksTraveler.org

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TOURS OTHER ATTRACTIONS

Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve, Idaho

Buffalo National River, Arkansas

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

Channel Islands National Park, California

Limestone karst cave system

Limestone karst cave system

Sea caves

Lava Tubes

Self-guided kayak tours; when conditions allow in winter, walk into the caves. Check the park’s Facebook page for status.

All caves closed to the public due to White-Nose Syndrome afflicting bats.

Self-guided and ranger-led tours; Slaughter Canyon Cave and Spider Cave are for the adventurous.

Check the park website for tour information.

You can kayak into the caves, but be mindful of swells that could push you into the ceiling.

Five tubes you can explore on your own.

Visit some of the lakeshore’s historic lighthouses.

Paddle the first national river in the National Park System.

“Bat Flight” programs offered from late May to October to watch Brazilian free-tailed bats emerge from the cave in the evening.

Snorkel or scuba dive to explore the kelp forests and marine life.

Hike along 17 miles of surface hiking trails

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Wisconsin

CAVE FORMATION

PARK

Your Guide to Caves Sea caves

Bitterly cold winter temperatures turn Apostle Islands’s sea caves into “ice caves.” / NPS

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Carlsbad Caverns offers some of the largest subterranean rooms open to the public / NPS

Your Guide to Caves El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico

Great Basin National Park, Nevada

Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

Jewel Cave National Monument, South Dakota

Lava tubes

Solution cave system

Explore the caves with rangers.

Five tubes you can explore on your own, free permit required from headquarters.

Ranger-led tours through Lehman Caves.

Explore the Thurston Lava Tube.

Choose your ranger-led tour from the park website.

Join a ranger to tour the Hensley Settlement.

Less than 7 miles of surface hiking trails.

Backpacking, camping, hiking, fishing.

Check at the visitors center to see about current programs on the eruption of the Kīlauea Volcano.

Stretch your legs on the park’s short trail system.

OTHER ATTRACTIONS

Solution cave system

TOURS

Lava Tubes

CAVE FORMATION

Limestone karst cave system

PARK

Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, Tennessee/Kentucky

The Thurston Lava Tube is the below-ground highlight of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park / NPS, Michael Szoenyi Lava tubes are the main attraction at El Malpais National Monument / NPS NationalParksTraveler.org

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OTHER ATTRACTIONS

TOURS

CAVE FORMATION

PARK

Your Guide to Caves Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

Limestone karst cave system

Oregon Caves National Monument, Oregon

Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Missouri

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan

Pinnacles National Park, California

Solution cave system

Limestone karst cave system

Sea caves

Talus caves

Multiple rangerled tours. Check the park’s website for tours that will be offered when you visit.

Choose from lantern tours, wild caving tours, and family cave tours.

Take a guide tour of Round Spring Cave.

Explore the lakeshore’s shoreline by kayak to spy the caves.

Self-guided tours of Bear Gulch Cave and Balconies Cave.

Check the park’s website to see if they’re open.

Paddling on the Green and Nolin rivers, backcountry camping, equestrian and mountain bike trails.

Explore the surface above the caves with a hike in the mountains.

Paddling on the Jack’s Fork and Current rivers, backcountry camping, equestrian trails.

Visit in winter for ice climbing.

Hone your climbing skills above ground.

Oregon Caves National Monument is an overlooked, but not underwhelming, destination for cave enthusiasts / NPS

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Your Guide to Caves Sequoia National Park, California

Sea caves

Solution cave system

Solution cave system

Solution cave system

Limestone karst cave systems

Solution cave system

Check with the Point Reyes National Seashore Association about guided trips.

A short ranger-led tour of the cave shelter.

Ranger-led tours through Crystal Cave.

Ranger-led tours through Timpanogos Cave. Some more strenuous than others.

Check the park’s website for information.

All caves are closed to the public.

Ranger-led tours. Check the park’s website for tours available during your visit.

TOURS

Kayak in Tomales Bay, hike out to the historic Point Reyes Lighthouse.

Go birding in the park, which is listed on the North Alabama Birding Trail.

Explore the Giant Forest of sequoia trees.

Explore the Wasatch Range with a drive along the Alpine Scenic Loop.

World War II history, hiking Asan Ridge Trail.

Set up camp in the Elk Mountain Campground and explore the park’s trails and wildlife.

OTHER ATTRACTIONS

Timpanogos Cave National Monument, Utah

Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota

CAVE FORMATION

Though big trees are the main draw to Sequoia National Park, Crystal Cave is definitely worth a visit during your stay in the park / Vgane at English Wikipedia

War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Guam

PARK

Russell Cave National Monument, Alabama

Point Reyes National Seashore, California

Soda straws dangling from the ceiling are just some of the speleothems you’ll encounter at Wind Cave / NPS, Jason Walz NationalParksTraveler.org

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The Lock and Dam BRING A NEW PERSPECTIVE TO AN OLD RIVER

By Patrick Cone

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he citizens of Minneapolis are coming together to give new life to the riverfront along the Mighty Mississippi. Nearby, old mills are now museums, warehouses are co-op apartments, light transit abounds, and pedestrians walk new trails. This bustling metropolis is looking towards the river, knowing that in order to preserve historic structures in historic areas that have outlived their usefulness, you have to give them new life with a new purpose. And that’s a boon for residents and tourists alike.

As part of that approach, planning is now underway to repurpose the historic Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. In 1937 Congress approved the Upper Minneapolis Harbor Development Project, which included the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, completed in 1963. But in 2015, partly in response to the threat of invasive species (primarily Asian carp), and partly because the lock could only take two barges at a time, the upper lock was closed for business. So, for the past year the public, government, and other stakeholders have been devising a new plan for the site. It’s a unique structure in a unique setting, steeped in history. And it looks like it’s well on the way to happening.

The Mississippi River bisects America, from its headwaters in the dense northern forests and straight through the heartland. It drains more than one million square miles of the United States, from Montana to Pennsylvania, from Nashville to Fargo. The cities of New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis all grew along its banks, relying on the powerful waters for transportation, agriculture, and industry. But, there is no place with a history more linked to the mighty

Above: An artist’s representation of the lock and dam / Friends of the Lock and Dam Right: Pedestrians on the historic Stone Arch bridge / NPS, John Anfinson

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river than the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and it’s all because of the mighty St. Anthony Falls that divides them.

St. Anthony Falls is the only major cataract along the Mississippi River’s 2,320-mile journey, pouring over a limestone shelf and dropping 50 feet. In fact, this drop accounts for 10 percent of the total height change of the Mississippi River between the Twin Cities and St. Louis. The river attracted pioneers, homesteaders and settlers, but it was the force of the falls that powered lumber mills, textile factories, and agricultural machinery, and later its electricity ran machinery and lighted the cities.

While wheat was ground, cloth was made, and boards were sawn along its banks, canoes, paddle wheelers, and barges carried people and cargo to market. While the falls themselves were a formidable obstacle to passage, they were overcome by construction of giant locks, giving access to the upper reaches of the river.

National Park Service rangers still take visitors on tours of the lock and dam, as it is part of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. But now there is a grand vision to transform the site, along with the

historic stone arch bridge just downstream, into a major recreation area.

John Anfinson, superintendent for the recreation area, sees the potential.

“One of the things, as an advocate, is that people in the Twin Cities don’t know that this is a national park, and a part of the (national) park system. It’s a highly visible location, which raises the visibility of the Park Service. It’s great for tourism,” he says.

Folded into the grand plans, the James J. Hill Stone Arch Bridge, completed in 1883 for the railroad, already sees thousands of pedestrians as part of the St. Anthony Falls Heritage Trail. Though it needs about $13 million in repairs, the bridge is becoming an ever more popular spot for bikes, kids and walkers, and increasing.

“Our visitation has grown from 112,000 in 2015, to 221,000 in 2016, and over 400,000 visitors in 2017,” says Anfinson.

“If St. Anthony’s becomes a world-class visitor center, then over 2 million people

The St. Anthony Falls and Lock aimed to neutralize the only major drop along the Mississippi River / Friends of the Lock and Dam

will cross the stone arch bridge.” Every Father’s Day weekend, the Stone Arch Festival entertains over 10,000 people a day with music, food, and entertainment. And that sort of thing could grow.

There are lots of different stakeholders working together. Since 2011 more than 20 statewide groups and national organizations have come together to create a plan for the future. The City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board passed supporting resolutions last summer.

And, in August of 2017 an 18-month study

was undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with completion last spring. Last year alone the Friends of the Lock and Dam (thefalls.org) raised $5 million, and last February Senators Hayden, Champion and Dziedzic introduced a bill to appropriate funds for the redevelopment.

The idea is to turn the area into a hub of recreation for outdoor activities like biking, fishing, paddling, water taxis, and walking.

The plan also includes a visitor center where guests can not only get something to eat, but learn about the river, the region, and the

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The National Park Service and its stakeholders are working to transform the St. Anthony Lock and Dam into a user friendly recreation area that will provide visitors with more information on this historic structure and more space to relax / Friends of the Lock and Dam

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National Park Service.

From her role as the senior program manager for the Midwest region at the National Parks Conservation Association, Christine Goepfert foresees lots of activity.

“There’s going to be outfitters like Nice Ride, Paddle Share, and Wilderness Inquiry providing all the programs they do, with big canoes, and there’s going to be a park,” she says.

Friends of the Lock and Dam’s Kjersti Monson says, “This is an incredible iconic feature. We’re kind of standing here at the place where Minneapolis was born.”

A number of options are on the table for that evolution. One, though unlikely, is to remove the lock and dam itself.

“If you take out the lock at high water it will be big rapids,” says Superintendent Anfinson. “At low water you could float on an inner tube through the 8.5-mile gorge. In 1858 steamboats came and went from St. Paul over 1,000 times.”

One believer in the lock and dam’s future is Paul Reyelts, the former chief officer at the Valspar Corporation. His $400,000 contribution primed the pump for the friends’ group, helping NPCA create an Ideas Book that shows the potential for such a site.

The falls are in close proximity to downtown Minneapolis and other facilities, including the Guthrie Theatre, Mill City Museum, and the waterworks park. Reyelts and the friends group see the renaissance as a way to revitalize the waterfront and give energy to this essential waterway that was the birthplace of these magnificent cities.

Preliminary plans show a greenspace along the river, walkways and paths, public spaces and historic signage. And it’s not just for locals.

“Over 40 percent of our visitors at the national park’s visitor center are from out of state,” says Anfinson.

As the makeover continues, all those visitors might be able to get a better sense, and view, of the power and majesty of the mother of all waters—the Mississippi River—from the green space at the base of the lock.

“To stand there where the water jumps up, there’s no place on the river where you can experience so much power next to the falls,” says Superintendent Anfinson. And while there’s no set date for completion of the project, it seems well on the way to becoming a reality.

St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River / NPS, John Anfinson

This is an incredible iconic feature. We’re kind of standing here at the place where Minneapolis was born.

A concept drawing of what the St. Anthony Falls and Lock and Dam might look like / Courtesy Friends of the Lock and Dam

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ADVERTISER-SUPPORTED CONTENT

Maintaining The National Park System

THE NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION

Working To Protect The National Parks For Today And Tomorrow

P

reserving our national inheritance—for all time—is no small feat when you consider the enormity of the task. Yet it is an undertaking we have tirelessly pursued since our inception in 1967.

We protect national parks and create life-long connections to these natural, cultural, and historical gems.

As the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, it is our responsibility to guarantee that parks remain protected for future generations. The support of a passionate and engaged community of park lovers propels the National Park Foundation’s mission—it is the driving force behind everything that we do.

Thanks to the individuals,

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foundations, and companies who help us champion the parks’ cause, we continued the pursuit of our mission and welcomed record-breaking support last fiscal year. Our donor community grew by 29 percent, and we received 17 percent more donations compared to the previous year. This support meant that we were able to award $41 million for the betterment of your beloved parks and public lands.

Private philanthropy and strategic partnerships enable us to make a real difference in our parks. Part of that impact focuses on crucial investments in conservation, preservation, and restoration initiatives. Here are some of the ways these investments were realized across the National Park System.

v Together with local philanthropic

partners, we permanently protected 702 acres, valued at over $47 million, at three national parks including Grand Teton and Acadia national parks, and Harriet Tubman National Historical Park. v We funded major historic

preservation projects in parks including the Washington Monument, Great Smoky Mountains and Glacier national parks. v We supported an ongoing

research study on the impacts of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

The other part of our impact seeks to engage national park stewards. By creating meaningful opportunities for people to connect with all that parks and programs have to offer, we nurture life-long connections to our national treasures. Here are examples of the work our grants facilitated: v We hired 274 youth through Youth

Conservation Corps at 8 different national parks to help with tasks including restoring and repairing park trails and fences and removing invasive species. v We contributed to the development

of new citizen science education programs that enable students to

experience science beyond the textbook, getting outside and into national parks. v We transported nearly 180,000 4th

graders from 2,113 different schools to 120 national parks and public lands to experience programs that enhance school science and social studies curricula.

Proud as we are of all that we accomplished together, the reality is that our work is never done. Between cuts in federal funding, the impacts of record-level visitation, and ever-aging infrastructure, these beloved places need us more than ever.

There are many ways you can join

us in championing this cause as part of the park community. By standing with us, you will be part of a legacy that began more than a century ago when private citizens joined together to protect our land and its rich history.

Our unwavering commitment to this work will ensure this cause remains at the forefront of our national conscience—never to be taken for granted, overlooked, or forgotten.

Thank you to all who have made this exciting work possible—your ongoing support is instrumental in ensuring we can continue to support parks and programs for years to come.

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FRIENDS OF THE PARKS Friends Supports Environmental Education Programs At Saguaro National Park To help Saguaro National Park fulfill its mission as an educator, the park and Friends of Saguaro have developed environmental education programs that help students understand the natural and cultural heritage of the Sonoran Desert.

Park rangers, Next Generation rangers, and volunteers deliver the interactive, hands-on programs. They take place at the park, in the classroom, and at local community centers. The programs also focus on extending environmental education to underserved youth, which helps the park build a stronger relationship with underrepresented community members. v Field Trips Nearly 12,000 students from 80 schools participated in field trips to the park. The trips engage students in placebased, enjoyable hands-on activities that allow them to explore and discover the significance of the park’s resources, and introduce them to the National Park System and National Park Service mission.

Friends of Saguaro stepped up with a grant to cover the transportation costs to get local school children into Saguaro National Park where rangers introduced them to the park and some of its natural resources / Friends of Saguaro

v Teacher Rangers Seven Teacher Rangers connected 358 children with the outdoors through active education and recreation. v Hiking Clubs The clubs took 360 students on 23 hikes during the school year. Students learned about the importance of fitness and explored the trails at the park. v Junior Ranger / Cactus Ranger Sixty students participated in eight programs that focused on habitat and resource protection projects.

v Wilderness Camps Sixty-one students participated in three weekend camps. They learned about camping, hiking, and the enjoyment of spending time outdoors. v Travel Trunk During the academic year, five “Travel Trunk” programs took place for 230 students. This opportunity allows rangers to bring the park to the classroom with programs that enhance in-class teaching.

Field trips to Saguaro National Park made possible by Friends of Saguaro bring students in touch, literally, with the outdoors / Friends of Saguaro National Park

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v Community Outreach Nearly 2,500 students participated in 34 community outreach programs at community centers throughout southern Arizona. v Transportation Friends of Saguaro provided transportation grants to all local schools that requested them so students could participate in field trips to Saguaro during the last academic year. With this program the friends group reimburses the school district for the cost of a bus and driver for a field trip, and the cost of a van for a hiking club with a Teacher Ranger. v Next Generation Rangers and Volunteers Five Next Generation Rangers and 65 volunteers were vital to the park’s delivery of environmental education programs in 2017.

With the support from donors in 2017, Saguaro National Park’s environmental education programs were able to engage with over 15,000 youth in southern Arizona, the highest annual total to date!

Please consider making a donation to support the ongoing Environmental Education programs at Saguaro National Park.

Youth Leadership Adventures: Inspiring The Next Generation Of Conservation Leaders “Out here in the backcountry, I learned naturalist skills like identifying native plants, how to Leave No Trace and why it’s important, and the indigenous history of this region,” explained O., a young woman who lives in Bellingham in northwestern Washington State. “Most importantly, I learned how to take care of myself, and how I can take care of the Earth.

“It makes me sad to not see people on the trail who look like me,” said S., a Latina

North Cascades Institute’s Youth Leadership Adventures program introduces teens into the landscape of North Cascades National Park, where they learn environmental stewardship and leadership skills / North Cascades Institute

student from rural Skagit Valley. “I am a woman of color and I want to help more people like me get outside and get the good energy I get when I’m out here.”

“I had this realization while hiking up to Hannegan Pass,” said M., a student who grew up in a small town on an island in the Puget Sound. “Someone worked hard to make this trail available for me; I should work to make it available to the people who come next.”

These were a few of the reflections from high school students who participated in North Cascades Institute’s Youth Leadership Adventures, a summer program that aims to inspire environmental stewardship and leadership through experiences in nature.

Over the course of 8- and 12-day trips that take place in North Cascades National Park and Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanagon national forests, students canoe, backpack, camp, and complete stewardship projects while receiving hands-on training in outdoor leadership, field science, communication skills and public speaking.

These students come from diverse backgrounds—first-generation immigrants, local Native Americans, kids who have grown up in rural communities—but all are brought together on transformative trips in wild places to build the next generation of

conservation and stewardship leaders.

As we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of North Cascades National Park—and the many people who organized and rallied for decades to reach this conservation goal—North Cascades Institute has also been looking ahead to the next 50 years.

Who will be the change makers, leaders and environmental stewards of tomorrow?

As young people today grow up in an increasingly wired world, with screen time on the rise and time spent out in nature in sharp decline, who will be the defenders of our cherished public lands legacy?

“People who care conserve; people who don’t know don’t conserve,” formulated author and naturalist Robert Michael Pyle.

“What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never known a wren?”

For most Youth Leadership Adventures students, these trips are their first experiences with multi-day canoeing and backpacking trips, and their first time in a national park. But it’s clear at the end of their trips, from their shared emotional reflections and journal entries, it won’t be their last.

“My favorite part of the trip was the stewardship project with the trail ranger,” reflected A., who grew up in a farming community near Mt. Baker. “We rebuilt a washed-out trail using Pulaskis. It was very NationalParksTraveler.org

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difficult and sweaty, but also rewarding and made me feel strong. This trip was a way for me to find what I had lost for a long time: my self-confidence. I can’t wait to come back.”

Read a July 2018 YLA trip report from Ross Lake in North Cascades National Park at https://blog.ncascades.org/youthprograms/yla-2018-ross-lake-rockers.

Learn more at www.ncascades.org/ signup/youth/YLA.

Artifacts At Olympic National Park – Gifts In Action

By Kelly Sanderbeck, Washington’s National Park Fund At the time the trifecta moon passed through our lives last spring, I got to do three things I love most—spend time with a donor, visit with a park ranger, and explore a bit in our beloved mountains.

The idea started when I talked to a donor about the Film Digitization Project he had funded at Olympic National Park that took old photos and videos—sitting on shelves since the 1950s—archive them, and put them in digital format. Not only was the safe storage issue solved, but also they would eventually be accessible to an online audience for research and enjoyment.

Matt Dubeau, the park’s museum curator and research coordinator, expressed so much excitement and pride in his work that I thought an in-person visit might be appropriate.

We met at the unassuming ‘Cultural Resources’ building to begin our tour.

Who could have known what was held in that nondescript and modest space!

First stop was a temperature and humidity controlled room, approved by the Department of the Interior, that houses over 100 years worth of photos, insect displays, news clips, baskets, tools, art, taxidermy, archaeological finds, an herbarium, fire lookout journals, and boxes of files from research employees who had retired.

Olympic National Park has more than 260 documented archaeological sites, and more are discovered all the time. Park staff doesn’t do active research, but must test for relics anytime a trail is being repaired or building site renovated. When the park took on the Elwha River restoration, among the many archaeological sites identified during removal of the dams were the remains of a large, formerly submerged, 22

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A grant landed by Washington’s National Park Fund enabled the staff at Olympic National Park to digitize old photos and videos in the park’s archives / Washington’s National Park Fund

Above: Journals kept by fire lookouts in Olympic National Park tracked weather conditions along with fire starts.

Right: Among the treasures stored in the archives at Olympic National Park are tools used by native tribes that long called the landscape home / Washington’s National Park Fund (2)

prehistoric camp. Thousands of fragments of flaked stone tools and charred animal remains were recovered, and radiocarbon dating indicated it was more than 8,000 years old!

Highlights in the park’s archives include a box of 100-year-old photos from local Fanny Taylor that document native peoples and landscapes of the time in stark black and white. We also saw video clips from the 1950s by filmmaker Herb Crisler, part of the digitization project, and learned that some are already being used for educational purposes by the park’s Public Information Office and to scientifically document

changes in tree canopy coverage and growing patterns of wildflowers, from that time to the present.

In the end, our donor recalled: “It was very gratifying to participate in the effort Matt has underway to preserve this historical material and make it available online so that future generations will know the history of the park and the people who lived in the region.”

Protecting Nature’s Forest Masterpiece No matter how many times you’ve seen the giant sequoias in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove, it’s hard not to wonder at their size and tenacity. Sequoias can grow for millennia, reaching heights of nearly 300 feet. More than 150 years ago, they helped inspire the Yosemite Grant Act, which set aside the grove as one of the nation’s first protected landscapes.

In the decades following that legislation, however, pavement, compacted trails and other infrastructure put the sequoias’ future in question.

On June 30, 2014, Yosemite Conservancy and the National Park Service broke ground on a collaborative $40 million project to restore Mariposa Grove and ensure long-term ecosystem health.

Over the course of the project, the largest such effort in park history, crews removed nearly 1.5 acres of pavement, installed 600 feet of boardwalks and bridges over sensitive areas, built 4 miles of sustainable trails, and restored four acres of habitat.

Mariposa Grove reopened on June 15, 2018, following a three-year closure. Today, you’ll find a tranquil, inspiring place alive with natural wonder.

Your visit to the restored grove starts at the Welcome Plaza near Yosemite’s South Entrance, home to a parking area, educational exhibits and the Yosemite

Conservancy Depot. From the plaza, take a shuttle to the edge of the grove, where plants are growing in what was once a paved lot.

Among the trees, an ancient forest bursts with life. Listen for songbirds and revitalized streams. Look for snow plants, and sequoia seedlings, squirrels dashing along branches, and deer resting by the Grizzly Giant. Pause to read signs that explore science, stewardship and history.

The restoration brought balance and resilience back to Mariposa Grove—but didn’t leave it impervious to human and environmental impacts. The next time you visit, consider the role you can play in its future, by staying on trails and boardwalks; leaving cones and wildflowers on the forest floor, where they play a vital role in the rebounding ecosystem; and learning about, and from, the people who walked among the giants long before Yosemite became a national park.

We hope your experience in Mariposa Grove reinvigorates your sense of wonder, and leaves you with a greater understanding of the ways you can make a difference for the natural world.

Thank you to everyone who has played a role in restoring and protecting Mariposa Grove! Read an extended version of this story and other Conservancy updates at yosemiteconservancy.org/blog.

Thanks to generous support from the Yosemite Conservancy, the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias reopened this summer following a vigorous restoration program / Yosemite Conservancy

Last Inholding On Mormon Row To Become Part Of Grand Teton National Park Iola and Hal Blake have spent their summers living on Mormon Row and running the Moulton Ranch Cabins for 20 years.

This complex was the last privately owned inholding in Grand Teton’s well-known historic district. Clark Moulton, Hal’s grandfather and son of T.A. Moulton—one of the original pioneers who homesteaded the area in the early 20th century—transferred it to the Blakes in 1998.

Iola and Hal made the decision to put their home on the market last June.

Thanks to the Grand Teton National Park Foundation, a donor was able to provide the money needed to purchase the Moulton Ranch Cabins and have the property donated to the park / Drew Orlando Sky Def Productions

The Blakes wanted the property to become part of Grand Teton. After discussing the opportunity with park leadership, they realized that the National Park Service did not have funds to purchase it outright.

Grand Teton National Park Foundation is pleased to share that a strategy is now in place to preserve the property and ultimately transfer it to the park.

Under Teton County’s current zoning regulations, a private purchaser could have redeveloped the inholding, building up to 10,000 square feet of development that may not have been compatible with the surrounding historic district.

News of the one-of-a-kind real estate listing spread across the nation, highlighting the risk of losing this key piece of an iconic historic district in Grand Teton National Park.

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Parcels along Mormon Row in Grand Teton National Park soon will all be held by the park, as Iola and Hal Blake are going through the paperwork to transfer the last private inholding there to Grand Teton / David Swift

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A generous philanthropist approached the Foundation to see if there was a possibility to purchase the Moulton Ranch Cabins and donate the inholding to Grand Teton. The anonymous donor cares deeply for the park and is concerned about its pressing need for seasonal workforce housing.

The Blakes will transfer their Mormon Row property to Grand Teton National Park Foundation before year-end. This will continue a near century-long effort for the National Park Service to manage and conserve all land within Grand Teton’s boundaries, a vision that has incrementally shaped the park that we know today. Once transferred to the park, the existing lodging facilities will eventually be utilized for seasonal employee housing—a critical need for Grand Teton.

Although Iola and Hal are sad to see

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this chapter in their lives come to a close, they are ready to embrace what the future holds. “We are thrilled that the Foundation is purchasing the property for the park,” Hal said. “To have the park take over the stewardship of our family’s story and legacy, we are so grateful.”

Visit www.gtnpf.org for more information about Grand Teton National Park Foundation’s current projects, programs, and campaigns.

Kids In Parks Blazes A Path In The Park Rx Movement More and more doctors are turning to an innovative tool to help children feel their best: nature. Through a growing movement called Park Rx (or Park Prescriptions),

physicians are prescribing excursions in the outdoors for the health benefits.

In today’s world, kids spend more than seven hours per day on some type of screened device, compared to a mere seven minutes in unstructured outdoor play.

These numbers are having a profound effect on children’s physical and mental health.

Time spent being active outdoors has been shown to improve issues ranging from obesity to ADHD. The Kids in Parks program of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation is supporting this movement to improve the overall well-being of children with its TRACK Rx program, which connects doctors to its nationwide network of trails designed to engage families with public outdoor spaces near them.

Here’s how it work: Kids in Parks partners with pediatricians and nurses to promote outdoor fun with mini-trailhead signs and self-guided brochures that are installed in the lobbies of doctors’ offices and community health care centers. These professionals then write prescriptions to underscore the benefits of the outdoors on health.

Once a child “fills” their prescription by taking a hike, they register their activity at KidsinParks.com. Through a serial number system developed by Kids in Parks, physicians can measure the impact of the program because they receive a notification about their patients’ excursions. Plus, the child receives a prize in the mail as a reward.

The TRACK Rx program is expanding rapidly with more than 90 doctor offices and 350 healthcare providers in Maryland and North Carolina already writing prescriptions.

“We’ve seen a large uptick in TRACK Rx registrations this summer,” said Jason Urroz, director of the Kids in Parks program. “It’s our hope that once healthcare providers see data demonstrating the results of this type of intervention they will rapidly embraced the Park Rx movement and more and more families will head outdoors to feel good.”

To learn more about the program, visit KidsinParks.com or contact Urroz at jurroz@brpfoundation.org or (866) 3082773, ext. 384.

Staying healthy can be as easy as taking a hike in the Blue Ridge Parkway or one of the other units of the National Park System. And thanks to a program created by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, your doctor can monitor your progress! / Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation

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Photo by Mark Hendricks

THE SHORT, HAPPY LIFE OF A

Self-Drive Safari Goer

By Mark Hendricks

My friend James, a wildlife guide in Kenya, warned me: “And whatever you do, do not run over a Maasai’s goat.” Check. I never plan on running over animals so I should be fine. “I’m not too worried about that,” I say with a sharp grin.

“I’m serious,” he said. “You won’t be able to reason with them if you hit a goat. They’ll tell you it was pregnant and still had generations of goats to give birth to. Even if it was a male.”

S

o much for warnings about ferocious lions and aggressive bull elephants; it was goats that I would have to be extra diligent around in the east African bush. For my adventure seeking wife and me, Africa was always a dream. But we wanted to experience it on

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our own, without tourists who were in a rush to get back to luxury tents to sip on mango infused cocktails. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we wanted adventure.

We sought the thrill of the “Big Five” of African game—the lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and

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Cape buffalo. Think Hemingway and Roosevelt but armed with an 8.5 pounds 500mm lens.

We wanted to meet locals and experience their culture but not in a controlled tour. Think a neighborhood bar, but with the occasional vervet monkey that might steal your beer.

After researching our options we decided to embark on a month long self-drive safari in Tanzania. We could travel at our own pace and experience the bush how we want, which is very important for my career as a conservation and wildlife photographer. However self-

A self-supported safari in Tanzania lets you spend 24 hours a day with wildlife, from elephants and lovebirds to rhinos and lions / Mark Hendricks

drive there is quite rare.

The practice is much more commonplace in more developed countries like South Africa and Zambia. Luckily we found Shaw safaris, a Tanzanian company that provides the service.

Founder’s Paul and Erika Sweet formed the business when they realized there was an opportunity to cater to more adventurous travelers to the country.

“We set up in Tanzania as we saw there was a large gap in the market,” says Paul, “Tanzania is for the real adventure. Full strength, raw Africa as opposed to a softer option in some of the more developed countries.

We feel if you are outgoing and up for a different type of experience then you can enjoy all that Tanzania has in a much more personal way.”

We mapped an itinerary where we would visit and camp primitively in some of the country’s most famous parks: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Serengeti, and the Ngorongoro Crater. Shaw would provide us with a

fully equipped safari vehicle with a roof tent, a few day’s rations of food, as well as cooking supplies, tools, and spare car parts. Additionally Erika provided us with towns to visit where we could refuel and resupply.

The headquarters is located outside of Arusha National Park. Here the couple own and operate Twiga Lodge, where we rested and learned how to safely maneuver our safari vehicle, a large manual transmission Land Rover belovedly named “Pastor.”

Paul informed us that it was purchased from an old missionary. Maybe it’ll bring us salvation?

We would need that if our practice runs were any indication. A few missed turns here, almost flipping the vehicle over a large boulder there; at the very least I hope “Pastor” accepts my atonement for previous speeding tickets. After a slightly disastrous performance, Paul recommended that we change our itinerary and spend a day and night in Arusha National Park where

Caption

Shaw Safaris can outfit you with a Land Rover, complete with roof-top tent and meals for about $350 a day / Mark Hendricks

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Surprises seemed to come daily for the author and his wife, such as the day a wildebeest migration was encountered / Mark Hendricks

we could have more practice.

Lush and green, the park, devoid of lions, is excellent for herbivores, as well as a sublime view of Mt. Kilimanjaro’s western summit. The most stunning sight was the thousands upon thousands of greater and lesser flamingos that congregate in the lakes of the park.

After a few hours of getting used to shifting gears on the hilly terrain, we arrived at our campsite where we were greeted by a lone bull giraffe.

It was in this moment when we truly arrived in Tanzania.

Our campsite, surrounded by jungle foliage, was our front row to an evening symphony 28

After a few hours of getting used to shifting gears on the hilly terrain, we arrived at our campsite where we were greeted by a lone bull giraffe. It was in this moment when we truly arrived in Tanzania.

Our campsite, surrounded by jungle foliage, was our front row to an evening symphony of tropical birds and black and white colobus monkeys.

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The platform on the roof of the Land Rover came in handy for watching birds and other wildlife / Mark Hendricks

of tropical birds and black and white colobus monkeys. A very serene moment, though this peaceful feeling would not last as our tent was overtaken by curious monkeys in the middle of the night. Innocuous in their approach, they were most likely in search for food but were very, very noisy.

The following morning we, after drinking copious amounts of caffeine, departed for Tarangire National Park and drove through the busy streets of Arusha where we experienced the most difficult roads. The colorful streets

are full of people, bikes and cabbies. The key is to simply take it slow, and you’ll be fine.

Tarangire National Park is most famous for elephants and its high concentration of ancient baobab trees.

Warthog, impala, and Thompson’s gazelle abound.

Hornbills perch on acacia trees, ostrich frolic on the dry land, and lilac-breasted rollers take to the sky. We camped in the most beautiful site where I have ever pitched a tent; a primitive site surrounded by baobab trees. At dusk, a large flocks of lovebirds roosted

above us and two wildebeests ventured past our vehicle.

In a moment of Dejavu, something outside investigated our tent in an almost serpent like fashion.

A large grunt confirmed it to be an elephant. Even in the dead of the African night the encounter left an electricity in the air which continued through the next morning as we encountered a pride of lions on a wildebeest kill as we departed the campsite, most likely one of our visitors from the night before.

Next on our itinerary was Lake Manyara National Park which is most famous for its namesake alkaline lake.

Its forests are filled with baboons and blue monkeys.

While driving through the jungle one must be careful of the occasional elephant or Cape buffalo that crosses the road. Fate smiled upon us here, as we were the first to kayak in the lake after two years of low water levels. A guide who patrols for hippos accompanied us and around the lake we observed pelicans, flamingos, and giraffe. The birding was spectacular and we were gifted with a close encounter with a pair of beautiful little bee-eaters.

The southern road to Serengeti is a corrugated, dusty behemoth of scared tarmac. This driving is what locals call an “African massage.” Worse was the domesticated goat. As the great oracle James foretold, be weary of these suicidal goats.

Some would run toward the

At times the wildlife, like this lioness, seemed happy to pose for the photographer / Mark Hendricks

vehicle as soon as we came around a bend while others would refuse to move. We were at the mercy of their indifference to life on the African plains.

It was in Serengeti where we experienced many incredible moments by our lonesome. One morning we had breakfast in midst of 20,000 migrating wildebeests and hundreds of zebras. Later we watched a very pregnant cheetah unsuccessfully chase a gazelle. Two bull hippos

battled for dominance, their grunts louder than their splash. Hyenas played outside our campsite.

One animal I hoped to encounter was the black rhino, though seeing them in Serengeti National Park is extremely rare. Poached to dangerously low numbers there are only around thirty in the entire park. We explored the small, rocky hills of the moru kopjes region, where your best chance of catching a glimpse of the rare beast is. Elephants, buffalo, secretary birds, and jackal were all encountered, but no rhino. Even a leopard crossed our path. A master of camouflage, we watched as it blended into the long grass and, almost apparition like, silently disappeared.

However on our way to

the Mara River to observe the great migration we stumbled across a mother rhino and calf in an area of Serengeti that they are not normally found. We spent an hour with the pair and they even took a mud bath next to us. Later we informed a ranger of the encounter so that they could send antipoachers to look after the pair. After thanking us, he looked at us, dumbfounded, and asked, “She didn’t charge?”

Finally we visited the Ngorongoro crater, a microcosm of Serengeti and the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera. Descending the crater before sunrise was quite exciting and we watched two large lionesses’ steal a wildebeest kill from a pack of hyenas. Getting around here is much easier than other parks because of its small size. That night we camped along the crater rim, the sky obscured by thick montane forest where the temperature dipped to freezing. A tropical boubou, a songbird, serenaded us to sleep with its beautiful song.

Feeling melancholy that the adventure was almost over, my wife drove through the streets of Arusha, which was much simpler now, as she had become quite the pro with the Land Rover. When we arrived at Twiga we were greeted

by Paul and Erika where we recounted our adventure over laughs and tea.

What I experienced in Africa was everything I could have hoped for. I came for parks and wildlife but left with lifelong friends and a deeper appreciation of my wife. Without following our own path these moments could not have happened. A self-drive safari was the perfect way to begin our adventures in East Africa and I cannot wait until our next one.

In Tanzania, the pink flamingos are not lawn ornaments / Mark Hendricks NationalParksTraveler.org

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ADVERTISER-SUPPORTED CONTENT

A NATIONAL PARK THAT’S

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

L

ocated approximately 70 miles west of Key West is Garden Key, the site of historic Fort Jefferson National Monument located within the Dry Tortugas National Park.

Over 60,000 visitors are either ferried on a state-of-the-art catamaran out of Key West called the Yankee Freedom III or fly here via seaplane every year. It is, without a doubt, one of the least accessible and one of the most remote national parks in the nation and that, as it turns out, is a very good thing. The grounds here are very well cared for and maintained. Time has largely stood still here since the fort’s decommissioning and you won’t be inundated with eager tourists that would otherwise threaten to disturb the natural order of things out here.

If someone wants to experience this fantastic oasis, then they’ve got to make a special effort to do so. All of these factors ensure that this exceptional chain of islands on the outskirts of the Gulf of Mexico remains the tranquil, raw and beautiful place that it is.

Besides its isolated geographic location, the thing that sets this national park apart from all the others is that a majority of it isn’t anywhere you can walk or hike to. It’s underwater.

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Diving at Dry Tortugas National Park means exploring reefs teeming with colorful fish as well as long ago wrecks / NPS

If you were to see a birds-eye view of this 11-mile island chain with the great, imposing fort at its center, you would notice clusters of reef beneath a sea of deep blues and greens virtually everywhere you looked. Divers of all stripes and skill levels flock here to witness the stunning marine life, coral formations, and seagrass beds that appear as submerged islands encroaching on the larger ones above the water line. The park consists of 46 square miles of protected

reef, which is all part of an even larger marine sanctuary that spans 151 square nautical miles. Yes, there is a lot of ground, or, rather, sea to cover here for the adventurous diver; however, for those arriving with Yankee Freedom III, the prime snorkeling spots are all fairly close to shore.

Once you strap on your fins and get your mask and snorkel all situated, you’re ready for some first-rate undersea exploration mere feet from shore. One of the many

reasons this part of the world is so ideal for diving is that the depth of the water is relatively shallow. Just outside the park, however, the water can reach a depth of 100 feet and one should be mindful of the currents in these outer reaches should you decide to venture outside the boundaries of the park reefs.

So, what can you expect to see down there?

With a name like the Dry Tortugas, it’s reasonable to expect to see some sea turtles and you’d be right. When Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon discovered this place and gave it its name in 1513, he noticed an abundance of loggerhead, green, and leatherback turtles occupying the soft sandy beaches for their nesting grounds. Originally called Las Tortugas, it was later changed as a warning to sailors and seafarers that the area offered no sources of potable water.

The parade of color on display around the neighboring reefs has few equals. The sealife appears as if painted by a very skilled hand and vibrant hues of every shade decorate this amazing underwater landscape.

It is a competitive environment for the fish down there that rely on the reef ’s bounty for their livelihood, so they’ve learned to adapt crafty survival techniques through natural selection. Larger fish with a more cylindrical shape can always opt for greener pastures, as it were, because they are better suited to swimming in the open ocean, whereas, an angel fish, with its small, flat profile can maneuver with ease in the labyrinthine nooks and crannies of the reef ’s many coral formations where macroscopic algae, diatoms and small crustaceans are often found.

Some of the more common inhabitants in these waters are butterfly fish with their small mouths, large pectoral fins and friend-

Visitors to Dry Tortugas not only spend their days kayaking around Fort Jefferson, but also donning flippers, masks, and snorkels to get closer to the marine life / NPS

ly demeanor, grouper, snapper, wahoos, tarpon and the ubiquitous barracuda. Massive starlet corals, brain corals and colorful sea fans make up a thriving ecosystem that is simply astonishing to witness. For an even more intimate encounter, you can snorkel the fort’s moat wall at night where you’ll see marine life that favors to nocturnally roam the seabed, such as octopus and lobster.

Also, the reef fish that were so elusive during the day are much more docile and easily approachable at this time.

The other prized attraction that lures the multitudes who dive these waters are the shipwrecks. The Dry Tortugas is home to over 200 wrecks that help preserve this delicate ecosystem by acting as artificial reefs.

Because of the currents, severe weather, and numerous shallows, ships seeking passage through here have often met a disastrous fate, hence the need for the lighthouse

that still stands on Loggerhead Key. The three-masted, iron-hulled, sailing ship known as the Windjammer is the most popular wreck in the park and most accessible to snorkelers as it’s only in 20 feet of water.

The ship was hauling lumber en route to Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1901 when it ran aground and ultimately sank. Great visibility and a home for fish ranging from 200-pound jewfish to small tropicals make this a hot-spot for diving enthusiasts. Other suggested spots to investigate at and around the park are Little Africa, Texas Rock, Pulaski Shoals, and Long Key Reef. For scuba trips to these locations, please consult with local diving companies.

If ever there was a national park worth your attention, it’s this one. Make sure to book a trip on the Yankee Freedom III well in advance and you’ll discover a universe that welcomes you into its watery arms.

Among the underwater ornamentation awaiting divers and snorkelers are late 19th century pilings for coaling piers that sea fans and other marine life have attached themselves to / NPS NationalParksTraveler.org

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A Good Drive Through The

BADLANDS

By Kurt Repanshek

T

hey had me surrounded at the border. The border of Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park, that is. And “they” were a dusty herd of bison, moving from one lush meadow of grass to another, with their skittish young in tow.

That geyser-rich national park in northwestern Wyoming might be known as the bison capital of the National Park System, but here in southwestern South Dakota the bison at Wind Cave were out in full force and milling all about. Some paused briefly to consider whether I was a threatening predator or mere curiosity.

It took me nine hours to drive from my Utah home to Wind Cave, and smarter folks likely would opt to fly into Rapid City. However you get to South Dakota, there are some very good reasons to drive through this particular section of “flyover country.”

Rent a rig when you get off the plane in Rapid City.

You’ll soon find yourself in wayward parts of the park system replete with bison, caves, and badlands that you will remember forever, particularly if you’re from a wet and lush landscape.

Jewel Cave National Monument, Badlands National Park, Wind Cave National Park, and Mount Rushmore National Memorial are all an hour outside of Rapid City. They alone will easily justify your spending a week’s vacation exploring these parks. Toss in the Crazy Horse Memorial and Custer State Park, and 10 days or more wouldn’t be too short for an exploration of this landscape, both above and below ground level.

Where to begin? Head southeast from the airport 61 miles to Badlands National Park. Covering nearly a quarter-million acres, this park started out as a national monument in 1929. It is hauntingly beautiful in its seeming austerity, evidence of the harsh environment and the poor soils found here.

Top: The Yellow Mounds of Badlands National Park in spring or early summer is a setting you’ll not soon forget / NPS, Larry McAfee Above: Young bison seem more leery and inquisitive than their elders.

This one kept a close eye on the photographer / Kurt Repanshek NationalParksTraveler.org

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Badlands embraces a landscape that began to take form 69 million years, back when water covered the land. Once the inland sea drained away, the ebb and flow of rivers and floods added more sediment, and over the eons the rippled and eroded landscape was revealed as you see it today.

Here and there in Badlands there are bits and pieces of ancient life. Back in 2010 a 7-year-old visitor to the park spied a partially exposed fossil that proved to be the skull of a 32-millionyear-old saber-toothed cat.

You can start your exploration on the main park road that follows the northeastern boundary of the park’s North Unit. Stop at one of the overlooks and you’ll gaze out over a panorama of prairie

and colorful badlands. Here you’ll find the park’s only lodging, Cedar Pass Lodge. Another resting place lies just outside the North Unit, near Wall Drug.

Frontier Cabins Motel offers well-kept cabins, and even teepees for those seeking more Western flavor.

For more of an adventure, head to the park’s Stronghold Unit, which is part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and set out on foot to explore this rugged landscape. Just be sure to carry enough water, as what you’ll find there more than likely will not be fit to drink.

From Badlands, head southwest to Hot Springs, South Dakota, the gateway to Wind Cave. It’s approximately 60 miles of backroads, but check with locals about road conditions before setting out

Bison are not the only locals at Wind Cave and Custer State Park. This pronghorn buck kept a close eye on his harem and human onlookers / Kurt Repanshek

on this route. If you’re not adventurous, a 92-mile route that takes you through the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation might be safer.

Wind Cave is one of the oldest units of the National Park System, designated in 1903, when it became the country’s eighth national park. It was named for a small crevice in a hillside through which winds have been clocked at over 70 mph. Above ground, the rolling, pine-studded surface of the Black Hills is beautiful, with several hundred bison, countless pronghorn antelope, and roving bands of elk.

Wind Cave’s bison herd started in 1913,

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Wind Cave’s bison herd started in 1913, when 14 of the animals—seven bulls and seven cows—were shipped from the Bronx Zoo via rail to the park to kick start a bison conservation effort that is responsible for an astonishing number of today’s herds.

when 14 of the animals—seven bulls and seven cows—were shipped from the Bronx Zoo via rail to the park to kick-start a bison conservation effort that is responsible for an astonishing number of today’s herds.

Sign up for one of the park’s underground tours, where you’ll see the rare and fragile boxwork formations. Above ground there are some nice hiking trails at Wind Cave, or you can drive around the entire 35,000-acre park via U.S. 385, South Dakota 87, and park route 5 in about an hour. Take longer if you dally to stretch your legs in the rolling Black Hills setting.

Just about 45 minutes east of Wind

After getting your fill of bison in Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park, you might consider a stop at the Crazy Horse Memorial / Kurt Repanshek (2)

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Helpful Tips: v The summer months, June, July

and August, are the busiest at Mount Rushmore. v There is no camping at Jewel

Cave National Monument. Wind Cave National Park has one of the nicest campgrounds in the park system, with 63 sites. v With proper planning, you could

do a morning cave tour at Wind Cave, and an afternoon tour at Jewel Cave. Or vice versa. v A campsite or cabin at Custer

makes a great basecamp for day trips to Wind Cave, Jewel Cave and Mount Rushmore. v The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally

in nearby Sturgis, S.D., in early August can be noisy and brings crowds to the area.

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Cave, tucked away in the Black Hills National Forest, is Jewel Cave National Monument. This overlooked park system unit was established in 1908 as a monument overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, which transferred it to the Park Service in 1933. While Wind Cave might have the world’s greatest collection of boxwork formations, Jewel Cave counters with the world’s greatest collection of calcite spar formations. It also happens to be the third-longest cave in the world, with nearly 200 miles of mapped passages and more exploration ongoing.

When the Park Service decided to expand the cave tours at Jewel Cave it had the help of cave explorers to choose where they should put the cave entrance. While the Natural Entrance is reached via a short hike, and is used these days for lantern tours, the main visitor center sits more than 200 feet above the so-called Target Room that Herb and Jan Conn discovered in the early 1960s.

Midway through that decade, after some meticulous aboveground mathematical calculations determined the exact spot above the Target Room, an elevator shaft was sunk down to this chamber. Today you get a quick, 27-second ride down to the Target Room to begin the popular Scenic Tour.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is the perfect culmination to your road trip / Kurt Repanshek

Don’t neglect the monument’s aboveground trails. Unless you’re waiting in line to buy your cave tour ticket when the visitor center opens at 8 a.m., you might have to wait an hour or more for your trip. Spend it taking a hike down the Canyons Trail.

From Jewel Cave, head east on U.S. 16 to the town of Custer, S.D., and just beyond it Custer State Park. Sharing a common border with Wind Cave, this state part boasts about 1,300 bison in its herd, roughly four times as many as the national park next door. You could spend a week at Custer fishing, hiking, paddling a canoe, and watching wildlife.

Afterwards, follow U.S. 16A to Mount Rushmore National Memorial to see the iconic stone presidents—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt—that were carved into the Black Hills during a 14-year period (1927-1941). From there, it’s only about 24 miles back to Rapid City and your flight home.

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Prepare For Your Yosemite Vacation With A Good Book Or Three

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n 1922, Herbert Earl Wilson wrote a book about Yosemite National Park.

More specifically, within the covers of The Lore and the Lure of Yosemite, he aspired to “create and foster in the Yosemite visitor an interest in that fast-dying race the Western Indian; in his mode of life, his customs, his religious beliefs and legends, in the days before the coming of the white man sounded the death knell of his people.”

The small book (pocket size at 7 inches by 5 inches) touches on Native American creation legends, the arrival of the Ah-wahnee-chees to the Yosemite Valley, their lifestyle, and customs. Of course, Wilson also wrote of the wonders of Yosemite—El Capitan, Bridal Veil Fall, Half Dome, even the “Big Trees of Mariposa Grove.”

Though not the first writer to regale Yosemite, Wilson, like many other authors, had a love for the park with a desire to build “an appreciation of the efforts of the splendid men who have made it possible as well as those who so efficiently administer its affairs.” Copies are still available.

There are many other Yosemite titles that might interest you. Here are just a few selections. You can find full reviews of each title on NationalParksTraveler.org.

Big Walls, Swift Waters: Epic Stories from Yosemite Search and Rescue When the Yosemite search and rescue men and women head out, they might be plucking a hiker from icy waters, evacuating a climber from a sheer cliff, or recovering the body of someone who wasn’t even that lucky.

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A Sense of Yosemite There are hundreds of books about Yosemite National Park, including the iconic Ansel Adams black and white homage, and John Muir’s The Yosemite. It’s no wonder either, with its 1,200 square miles of mountains and canyons and valleys like nowhere else on Earth. Yosemite means so much to so many. This is another musthave for your library. It’s a rare combination of beautiful images along with heartfelt words by two masters of their crafts.

Yosemite In the Fifties Personalities, towering granite walls, and historic photographs are at the heart and soul of Yosemite In The Fifties, a 176-page book that captures what is called the Iron Age of climbing in Yosemite National Park. There are some amazing perspectives on this incredible sport.

Speaking Of Bears, The Bear Crisis And A Tale Of Rewilding From Yosemite, Sequoia And Other National Parks Even before the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916 predators were an issue in the national parks. Grizzly bears and wolves were apex predators that preyed on deer, elk, moose, and bison. As such, they were viewed as evil, rapacious carnivores that should be exterminated.

Yosemite Meditations for Adventurers Words, it long has been said, take a backseat to photographs, but a collection of messages tied to the landscape of Yosemite National Park rise above the pictures.

John Muir Trail, The Essential Guide to Hiking America’s Most Famous Trail By now, it’s getting a bit late to be hiking the entire John Muir Trail. In fact, you should be nearing the end of your trek. But if you’ve wondered about walking the walk, here’s the armchair book for you.

The Soul of Yosemite: Finding, Defending, And Saving The Valley’s Sacred Wild Nature Does the National Park Service always make the correct choices? This book presents an insider’s view of what can go wrong in the decision-making process, why, and how to address them.

Spectacular Yosemite

Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite

Yosemite National Park is big and expansive, and so a book that captures its wonders in photographs must be large enough to take up most of your coffee table.

This one does.

Death is the final appointment we can’t avoid, the one we most regret. And yet we’re fascinated with tragic deaths such as those that occur in the parks. For those fascinated by such stories, Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite is a must-read.

My First Summer in the Sierra A century after John Muir published My First Summer in the Sierra, a 100th anniversary edition of the book has been released, with striking photography.

Legacy of the Yosemite Mafia: The Ranger Image and Noble Cause Corruption In The National Park Service

Ansel Adams in the National Parks Long after his death we continue to celebrate the brilliance of Ansel Adams, who arguably defined landscape photography, often while working in national parks to capture the magnificence of nature.

This book is a prequel of sorts to Paul Berkowitz’s earlier book about National Park Service malfeasance. Or Robert Danno’s own account of how he was pilloried by agency superiors after he charged that his superintendent ignored well-established federal laws and agency policies and procedures in showing deference to a billionaire.

Yosemite & The Southern Sierra Nevada For many a national park trip might cover several national parks. Just so you don’t need a different guidebook for each, this book covers the High Sierra parks of Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon.

The Changing Range of Light, Portraits of the Sierra Nevada A gorgeous book of photography that captures the seasons of the High Sierra has arrived, but it comes with a pausing message that this beautiful landscape is changing before our eyes.

Pack along one or two of these books on your next Yosemite vacation.

They’ll be sure to spur some interesting evening discussion. And if you’re wondering where to stay, consider one of the more than 100 properties at Yosemite’s Scenic Wonders Vacation Rentals. With homes in Yosemite West and Wawona, the park is right out the front door.

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Left: A mix of wood storks, white ibis, and egrets made their nests along the Broad River on the gulf side of Everglades / NPS Right: Wood storks turn trees into multi-story nesting units / Mark Cook

Return Supercolonies

By Erika Zambello

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To

Nesting Wading Birds Crowd Everglades National Park

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wirling clouds of blue, white, and pink once rose above the Everglades in drifts that practically stained the sky when herons, egrets, storks, ibises, and spoonbills that numbered in the hundreds of thousands nested in the River of Grass. They took to the sky in giant, whirling clouds of feathers, intent on providing their chicks with enough food to fledge.

Adapted to the historic water conditions in South Florida, the mind-boggling nesting seasons of these birds first faced decimation by humans during the hat-plume craze at the turn of the 20th century, and then by the massive draining and reshaping of the Everglades after World War II. By 2016, the numbers looked particularly bleak. According to the South Florida Water Management District’s annual wading bird report, nest counts had plummeted to their lowest numbers since

2008. Of the monitored species, White Ibises, Wood Storks, Snowy Egrets, Little Blue Herons, Tricolored Herons, and Great Egrets all experienced plunges in nesting levels, some over 50 percent. Only Roseate Spoonbills had increased nesting success, and only in inland regions.

Birders and environmentalists began to despair; was the Everglades too far gone for restoration?

Then, the summer of 2017 rolled around. In a public workshop panel centered on the Everglades wading birds, Dr. Mark Cook of the water management district summarized that “a ‘perfect storm’ of ideal climatic conditions caused [a] super-colony event.” The birds had surged and made the 2018 nesting season one of the most prodigious in decades.

But let’s back up. Before the human-caused destruction of Everglades’

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Flights of colorful birds fill the air in Everglades National Park during the nesting season. This past season brought the largest number of birds in years to the park for nesting, and hopefully is a harbinger for future nesting seasons / Erika Zambello

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plumbing, years of poor nesting seasons contrasted with fantastic successes, according to normal fluctuations in annual weather and climate conditions. One year’s amazing nests would make up for the failure of another. However, as Everglades author Michael Grunwald described in his 2006 book, The Swamp, with the ambitious but ill-conceived Central and Southern Florida Project “[m]ore than 90 percent of [Everglades] wading birds and alligators had vanished” by the end of the 20th century.

Not enough water flowed to the River of Grass.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, nesting of four wading bird indicator species (Snowy Egrets, White Ibises, Great Egrets, Wood

Essential Park Guide | Fall 2018

Storks) averaged less than 8,500 nests total.

After decades of fixes that yielded few results, Congress adopted the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan in 2000 to return the “right quality, timing, and distribution of water to the area.” Since then, nesting has picked up, with an average of almost 31,000 nests total from 2000 to 2017. As an example, in 2009 researchers counted more than 63,000 nests.

Still, since 2011 nesting had been at, or below, this mean, with 2016 a particularly bad dip.

It’s no surprise then that in 2018 Dr. Cook says he “almost literally fell off my chair when I came to the final count of 112,000 nests.”

That would be 112,073, to be exact, close to

the nesting levels prior to dredging and diking in the region. A total of 91,656 nests came from White Ibises, 14,130 from Great Egrets (the highest number ever counted), 2,769 from Snowy Egrets, and 3,518 from Wood Storks.

What happened?

While restoration efforts certainly helped, the weather conditions in 2017 that proved to be devastating to Puerto Rico and the Florida Keys provided a critical water pulse for the Everglades wading birds. From the air, Lori Oberhofer, a wildlife biologist at Everglades National Park, saw colonies so dense the birds appeared to coat the landscape like snow. Walking through the nesting areas themselves would showcase squawking young, the air alive with parents returning to their chicks and then leaving again in search of food. Nests were clustered in close proximity to one another, many species sticking together in dense clusters, but often multiple wading varieties forming colonies together.

In short, the second half of 2017 proved to be wet. That moisture that arrived after a dry April and May of 2017 helped increase crayfish populations. Then, what the National Audubon Society described as “biblical downpours,” in the summer kicked off bands of precipitation, culminating in Hurricane Irma in September and peak water levels in October.

Along with nourishing vegetation, the moisture that fall and into 2018 pooled in the sloughs and estuaries before nesting season actually began. And that, for hungry adults and chicks, created an additional bird food explosion.

During nesting season, a gradual drydown of the water concentrated fish, crayfish, and other prey into small, easyto-hunt pockets, allowing parents to bring food back to hungry young with ease. Wading bird chicks such as Roseate Spoonbills are intense feeders, explains Dr. Jerome Lorenz, state research director for Audubon Florida. The baby birds grow from their hatchling size close to a chicken egg all the way to nearly adult dimensions in only eight weeks.

With the typical Roseate Spoonbill nest holding three eggs, that’s a lot of caloric

needs for the avian family. When food is scarce, parent birds must spend too much time foraging, and not enough food reaches their chicks.

The final boon to nesting in 2018 came as spring turned to summer, when no huge rainstorms in April or May hit the region to cause water reversals, thereby avoiding the negative impacts of dispersing food sources. Those three weather patterns: a wet summer and fall, a gradual dry-down period, and a drier spring, created the happy proliferation of nests.

Wading birds act as critical indicator species for the Everglades region as a whole. Their strong nesting numbers in 2017-2018 provide evidence that both the bird species and the Everglades itself continue to harbor resilience.

Dr. Lorenz specifically addresses the important question: “Does [nesting success] mean we have succeeded in restoring the Everglades?”

“Not yet,” he concludes. “Mother Nature was really good to us this year.”

Dr. Lorenz did go on to say that restoration and management changes have helped. The water management district and other agencies try to give water to the conservation areas when possible, and additional projects are continually going from the design stage into the ground.

For example, in nearby Picayune Strand raised roads and canals are evened out to restore natural water flows to more than 50,000 acres. In the future, planners hope, among other things, to build water storage areas south of Lake Okeechobee to prevent large water discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuary ecosystems, remove levees and parts of the Miami Canal to increase both water sheetflow and freshwater flows to wetland areas. Overall, 18,000 square miles will be affected by restoration activities.

As restoration continues, park staff, locals, and wildlife lovers alike hope that the 2018 nesting success becomes the new normal, and that the scenes Alexander Sprunt, Jr. described in 1942—“as if humanity ceased to exist, and that we were intruders in a world which was people entirely by birds”—return for good.

A combination of a wet fall, followed by a dry spring, created perfect conditions for nesting birds that needed plentiful food nearby for their chicks. Efforts to restore natural flows of water through the River of Grass helped, too / Erika Zambello NationalParksTraveler.org

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NATIONAL PARKS: CORE RESERVES OF THE

Eastern Wildway

By Erika Zambello

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tanding along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, staring out over the overlapping peaks of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I was wrapped in the seasonal hues of orange, red, and yellow donned by nearby trees. Cars buzzed past, the parkway acting as a beautiful connector within the larger transportation system. The protected area not only aids human travel, but is a critical component of the Eastern Wildway.

Ecologists have long recognized the importance of linkages between critical wildlife habitat regions. Now the Wildlands Network has emerged as a leader in establishing north-south corridors in the Northeast and western half of the United States and Canada. The need is obvious: migratory animals care little for political boundaries around states, national parks, and other reserves. When these wild regions are isolated, flora and fauna struggle to move freely between them, and the fragmented habitat cannot

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sustain healthy populations The Wildlands’ strategy is straightforward: protect, manage, and connect “core reserves” through natural corridors. The land I gazed over in Great Smoky Mountains is one of these core reserves, large enough to provide havens to bears and other large carnivores in addition to migrating birds, elk, rare salamanders, and so much more. Yet the challenges faced by the Smokies are emblematic of other national parks— Everglades in Florida, Shenandoah in Virginia, even Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine—that are anchors of the corridor.

National parks receive a lot of visitors every year. Great Smoky saw more than 11 million people crowd through its entrances in 2017 alone. Overuse of park facilities and the landscape can lead to degradation. Plus, many of the core reserves are near population centers (Shenandoah is but 75 miles from Washington, D.C.) and

The rumpled landscape of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is seen as one link to a north-south corridor along the Eastern Seaboard that would aid movements of flora and fauna / Erika Zambello

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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15.

16.

Caloosahatchee Crossing Conecuh to Eglin Longleaf Altamaha and Ocmulgee Rivers ACE Basin to Francis Marion Green Swamp and Cape Fear Arch Linville Gorge to Roan Mountain Pine Mountain Arc of Appalachia West Virginia Highlands Pine Creek Watershed Shawangunks to Catskills Greenway Southern Lake Champlain Valley Northern Greens/Suttons Link Northeast Kingdom to Moosehead Three Borders Area Gaspesie to Forillon

John Davis 2011 TrekEast Route

are at risk for the effects of creeping development.

“And with a growing number of Easterners building first or second homes in relatively wild places,” the WN says, “people are collectively destroying the natural environments and solitude they seek.”

There is ongoing research to pinpoint corridor hotspots that need protection.

For example, Interstate 40 separates Great Smoky from nearby national forests, hampering migration of a variety of species.

Using GPS and camera traps along roads, teams are working to identify corridor crossings. Road-kill surveys also help pinpoint areas where wildlife bridges could be built to allow unfettered movement in and out of this section of the national park.

Such an approach has been successful in Florida’s Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. A barrier wall-culvert system reduced recorded annual wildlife deaths from 2,411 to just 158. More than 50 vertebrate species use the culverts, including fish, frogs, alligators, turtles, snakes, armadillos, shrews, rats, raccoons, and rabbits.

When private land can be used to enhance the Eastern Wildway, the WN works with local land trusts or national nonprofit organizations to either purchase the land directly or arrange conservation easements to facilitate wildlife migrations.

A proposed National Wildlife Corridors bill would provide a federally recognized “corridor” designation, which could be used to both highlight areas where management must not impede wildlife migration (such as building pipelines or mining) and/or focus federal funding on purchasing land or easements in identified corridor areas.

Already, the Essential 16 Wildlife Habitats have been identified to improve

Camera traps help researchers keep track of the wildlife, such as these red wolves, that are in the region and in need of safer travel corridors / Wildlands Network

connectivity in the North and Southeast.

Near Great Smoky, stakeholders are working to protect a dozen miles between two protected areas, including the park and national forests.

“Restoring this connection would enable wide-ranging species to move across a vast network of ridge tops and deep forest coves,” the WN team writes.

New national parks could further enhance the corridor; the envisioned High Allegheny National Park in West Virginia could encompass 500,000 acres.

If fully connected, the Eastern Wildway would link nearly half of land and water in eastern North America, encompassing habitats of black bear, bobcat, timber rattlesnakes, and box turtles in the southern Appalachians, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, red wolves, Florida panthers, and gopher tortoises in the Southeastern coastal plain, as well as moose, lynx, fishers, martens, and eastern wolves in the northern Appalachians.

Large protected areas are beneficial to humans as well. As I sat on a ridge beneath Clingmans Dome, the surrounding trees, birdsong, and mountain vistas instantly relaxed me. My breathing slowed and deepened, my mind cleared.

“In wilderness,” notes the Wildlands Network, “we find solitude, spiritual renewal, and a quiet setting for backcountry recreation.”

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What’s In Your National Park Library?

The Nature Instinct

Relearning Our Sixth Sense for the Inner Workings of the Natural World Most of us have lost our way in nature at one time or another. Light pollution blots out the stars in the night sky overhead, electronics, not fields and streams, hold sway over younger generations, and sprawl is claiming forests and meadows that once were the playgrounds of after-school youth.

Tristan Gooley has been trying to lead us back into nature with a series of books on how to “read water,” how to “taste direction,” and even how to “use spiders’ webs as a compass.”

Gooley’s latest effort, The Nature Instinct, teaches us what Daniel Boone no doubt mastered as a youngster. He describes how to tell north from south just by looking at a tree, how to navigate in unfamiliar terrain either by stars overhead or the position of the sun, and even how to pick up signals from livestock or wildlife tied to direction or danger.

But…how many of us would make the time to learn these lessons when cellphones can double as compasses, when Google knows just about everything, when we can ask “smart speakers” any question that pops into mind?

“It is a fair question, but I think it perhaps springs from a belief that people will only dedicate time to things that are necessary or have utility,” Gooley answered when I posed that question. “Most of our leisure time is dedicated to the enjoyment of non-productive pursuits: TV, film, crime fiction, computer games, Sudoku, crosswords, quizzes... these are just a random collection of things people find time for.

Why do they do it? Because they are enjoyable or satisfying—not because they are necessary.

“Allowing our brain to return to its first purpose, solving nature’s puzzles, can be more enjoyable and satisfying than all of the above.

Plus, you get to be in nature,” he pointed out.

Gooley can you lead you back to nature if you’re willing to invest the time, and are willing to shoulder the course load his books provide. The Nature Instinct is scheduled to be available Oct. 2.

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Essential Park Guide | Fall 2018

provides a checklist of all the waterfalls (with the page number where you can find his reports) so you can track the ones you’ve seen and the ones still remaining on your to-do list. There’s also a short section in the front that offers tips for waterfall photography. This is a great resource to pack with you on your travels to Virginia and West Virginia.

– Kurt Repanshek

Hiking Washington’s Fire Lookouts

Waterfalls of Virginia and West Virginia Rivers, streams, and creeks jump, leap, and roll through Appalachia. Where they meet steep slopes and cliffs, they launch into the air. Some plunge in stair-step fashion, others as frothing cataracts.

In this, his second edition, Randall Sanger points out 174 waterfalls in Virginia and West Virginia. And many, of course, can be found in places such as Shenandoah National Park, along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and within the landscapes cut by New River Gorge National River and Bluestone National Scenic River.

This gorgeous, full-color book glorifies Sanger’s chosen waterfalls, with images splashing across two full pages.

Many of these photos were captured with slow shutter speeds to bring out nuances of the falling waters. The image of Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah, for instance, turns the spraying water into streaming wisps akin to those cast by fireworks.

Beyond the imagery, Sanger provides details, noting where you can find each waterfall (GPS coordinates included), the name of the stream that creates the waterfall, how high it is, the nearest town, how difficult it is to reach the waterfall, and the round-trip hiking distance. He also provides reports of his own treks to these falls.

At the back of the book, Sanger

In my 20s and blinded by love, with a copy of Jack Kerouac’s memoir Desolation Angels in my pack, I hiked into a fire lookout in Washington’s North Cascades to meet my, hopefully, soon-to-be-girlfriend. The memories still persist, though she didn’t. But it was a unique experience unlike anything else.

Perhaps it was the 360-degree view of craggy mountains and snowy volcanoes, or the ultimate silence, or the merciless mid-day sun, or more than likely it was the blinding lightning and the torrential rain that followed in the middle of the night, that left me squealing like a baby looking for its mama.

But that was then, when fire lookouts kept an eye on the forest, spotting twisting columns of smoke and calling in the troops to put the flames out. Way back in the 1900s there were nearly 600 such structures, but today there are just 89.

Now, Amber Casali has put together the ultimate guidebook of 42 of the Washington’s lookouts that are still

standing, all accessible by trail.

The author, who visited all of these sites, writes, “At the lookout, we chatted with other hikers and gazed at the stunning view. Then suddenly, everyone was gone. It was a Saturday night in August, and to my amazement, no one was sleeping in the open lookout.”

Casali describes the first lookouts, around 1914, when firewatchers often just climbed a tree, but more permanent structures soon became the norm. There were cupolas with turrets, often rising high above the peak on top of dizzying staircases. Perhaps the most common by the 1940s were the 14-by-14-foot boxes, with windows on four sides, with hinged shutters and catwalks. Inside was the fire finder, for determining the direction and distance of the fire by those ever-vigilant firewatchers.

Some lookouts are accessible by road, but many take a good day, or multiday hike to visit. Many of them are unlocked and available on a first-come basis. You can actually rent two of the lookouts (Evergreen Mountain and Heybrook). If the lookout is staffed, then bring along a treat, maybe some fresh fruit or sweets. And take along plenty of water: remember, they are on top of the mountain.

Casali’s guidebook describes these 42 lookouts, with the location and map, what sort of access you can expect, and even the year it was built. And of course, there is the elevation, gain, and round-trip distance, as well as color photographs.

Desolation Peak is perhaps one of the longest approaches, with a 23-mile hike in, and a climb of 4,400 feet, to get a view of Mt. Hozomeen, described by Kerouac during his 63-day stint. (You can cheat that hike a bit by taking a boat up Ross Lake if you’re pressed for time.)

The 256-page book is well constructed, and organized by region: north, central, south, and Olympics, with another list of 45 existing lookouts that are more difficult to access or are closed to the public.

Published by The Mountaineers, you can pick up the book for about $17. You too can have an experience to remember. This collection certainly brought back some memories for me.

– Patrick Cone

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What’s In Your National Park Library?

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Grandma Gatewood Hikes The Appalachian Trail Grandma Gatewood’s story, of how she just “kept putting one foot in front of the other” and wound up hiking the entire Appalachian Trail at age 67 back in 1955, is well-known among long-distance hikers. But… it’s probably not so well-known among children. Jennifer Thermes aims to change that.

A children’s book author who previously wrote and illustrated Charles Darwin’s Around-the-World Adventure, Thermes’ latest work takes on Emma “Grandma” Gatewood’s story for kids 5 to 7 years old.

“The idea for the book actually started with the Appalachian Trail,” said Ms. Thermes. “I’d been fascinated by the A.T. for a few years—the way it meanders up the Eastern Seaboard through changing terrain—and Benton

Essential Park Guide | Fall 2018

MacKaye’s vision for what it could be. But I struggled with how to tell a compelling story about a place.

“I came across Emma’s name while reading about people who had hiked the trail, and there was something about her ‘just do it’ sensibility that I found appealing—tough, but with kindness underneath it all. I felt that kids would connect with her personality and her amazing journey.”

Naturally, for such a young audience Thermes doesn’t get into the domestic abuse Gatewood suffered at the hands of her husband and father of their 11 children. But she touches on how Gatewood enjoyed heading into the countryside behind their farm to get a break. And she explains how a magazine article about the Appalachian Trail that noted that no woman had ever hiked the entire path inspired Grandma to take a hike.

Through 48 pages, Thermes goes light on words but heavy on rich illustrations and maps that track Grandma’s trek from Georgia to Maine. And from time to time she drops a dollop of trivia, such as the “second-fasteston-land wind speed ever was recorded in 1934 on Mount Washington, at 231 miles per hour,” and that author Herman Melville was inspired to write Moby-Dick in part by the humpback shape of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts.

At the end of the children’s story, Thermes provides two pages of more detailed information on Grandma for parents, and background on the Appalachian Trail itself.

This book can not only introduce youngsters to nature and the Appalachian Trail, but also inspire them to seek out nature and make hiking a regular part of their lives.

– Kurt Repanshek

For more suggestions, visit National Parks Traveler’s book review section, nationalparkstraveler.org/review

Tale from America’s National Parks: Campfire Stories

The Sequoia Lives On “These largest trees on earth begin life as seeds about the size of an oatmeal flake yet can grow as tall as three blue whales stacked chin to tail.”

So reads the teaser to this just-released book from the Yosemite Conservancy.

And what better time to introduce youngsters to these massive trees, now that the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park has been reopened after three years of restoration work funded in great measure by the Conservancy?

Written by Joanna Cooke and illustrated by Fiona Hsieh, this book for kids ages 4 to 7 is the perfect introduction to sequoias before a hike into the Mariposa Grove, or into the Giant Forest of nearby Sequoia National Park.

The author traces the life of sequoias, explains how fire can open the cones that hold the seeds, and points out that “a large sequoia’s roots absorb enough water to fill more than eight bathtubs” every day.

Hsieh’s colorful and dramatic illustrations are enough by themselves to entice youngsters into the sequoia groves.

Parents haven’t been neglected by Cooke, who provides more detailed information in the back of the 32-page book on where sequoias live, how big some of the famous trees (General Sherman, for instance) really are, and how the trees absorb nutrients.

If your kids need to be drawn into the woods, this is a great introduction. And if they are curious about the natural world around them, The Sequoia Lives On would be a great addition to their young library.

– Kurt Repanshek

This is a lovely, well put-together gem of a book. It is not just another collection of ghost stories or tales of killer bears, meant to terrorize youngsters around the campfire, but a mature, reflective look at six of our national parks: Acadia, Great Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion.

Within its 224 pages, published

by The Mountaineers, you will read selections from modern and historic writers. Author Terry Tempest Williams, whose wondrous impressions of Acadia are excerpted from her book, The Hour of Land, says this book, “presents the spirit of these lands.” And she is absolutely correct.

Isabella Bird, the first woman to summit Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park (while wearing a Hawaiian dress), describes her ascent, and descent, through letters to her sister.

“As we crept from the ledge round a horn of rock I beheld what made me perfectly sick and dizzy to look at -- the terminal Peak itself -- a smooth, cracked face or wall of pink granite, as nearly perpendicular as anything could well be up which it was possible to climb, well deserving the name of the American Matterhorn.”

Wiley Oakley, an Appalachian guide takes you back to a time when the Great Smoky Mountains were home. There are also poems by

Wabanaki about Acadia, musings from John Muir on California wildlife, and a selection from A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson. There is a selection for any time or place, long or short, whimsical or deep with meaning.

Every story concludes with a description of the author, and context of the readings, and how they were selected. The editors also have a perfect primer on reading aloud, how to select the correct reading, when to read them aloud to the group and even the type of rhythm and cadence that works best to capture the campfire listener.

With a foreword by Carolyn Finney, author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, this book is slim enough to fit in the top flap of your pack, ready to pull out for an audience in the woods, or for an audience of one at the top of a peak.

– Patrick Cone

NationalParksTraveler.org

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FOR YOUR NEXT NATIONAL PARK ESCAPE

D

ude and Guest Ranch Vacations go hand-in-hand, and as ecotourism is becoming more popular than ever, the Dude Ranchers’ Association’s dude and guest ranches stand as the pioneers of green living and green vacations. At a guest ranch you can reconnect with nature in some of the country’s most tranquil, pristine national parks and national forests.

Glacier National Park in Montana is one of the 20 largest national parks in the United States. There is a DRA ranch located within an easy drive of the park, which is known for its abundance of wildlife and more than 700 miles of hiking trails. A day trip to Glacier National Park from the Bar W Guest Ranch is highly recommended. Western Pleasure Ranch in Idaho is a beautiful 200-mile drive to Glacier, across scenic northern Montana.

Inside the park you’ll find six peaks rising

more than 10,000 feet! So, the next time you’re looking for a destination before or after your stay at the Western Pleasure Guest Ranch, consider the majestic Glacier National Park.

Geronimo Trails Ranch is located in the middle of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico in some of the most beautiful, untouched country in the United States. From deep canyons to mountain tops, ponderosa forests to beautiful open meadows, the Gila National Forest has it all! It won’t be hard to figure out why New Mexico is called the Land of Enchantment.

If Yellowstone National Park or Grand Teton National Park is on your bucket list, there is no better way to experience all they have to offer than while staying at a dude ranch. Gros Ventre River Ranch is only 12 miles from the entrance into Grand Teton National Park, where you can hike the canyons, canoe Jenny Lake, or bike to

A dude ranch vacation in the Rockies, with a trip from Bar W Ranch to nearby Glacier National Park, leaves indelible memories / Dude Ranchers’ Association

secluded streams. Just ask your hosts and they will direct you to their favorite spotsCascade Canyon and Inspiration Point above Jenny Lake.

The Hideout Ranch located two hours east of Yellowstone Park gives you the

opportunity to enjoy all the park has to offer yet gives you a place to come back to after a long day of sight-seeing, a place where you can relax and have an amazing dinner. Who knows, you might even spot some wild horses outside of Cody, Wyoming, on your way back to the ranch. Eatons’ Ranch, located in beautiful Sheridan, Wyoming, is four hours from Yellowstone. You will travel over the amazing Big Horn Mountains to the Rodeo Capital of the world, Cody. From there it is short hour drive to the East Entrance of Yellowstone Park on a highway Teddy Roosevelt referred to as “the most scenic 50 miles in the world.”

Colorado has some pretty spectacular scenery, and Rocky Mountain National Park might hold the best. Wind River Ranch is blessed to have the park as its front- and backyard. It is an honor for them that their dude ranch has one of just a few horse concessioners permits and the only kayak concessioner permit for Rocky Mountain National Park.

Sylvan Dale Ranch is just a short drive away from Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park. Plan for a 35-45-minute scenic drive up the Big Thompson Canyon.

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Essential Park Guide | Fall 2018

Several weeks during the typical summer “dude season” their guests will elect an optional guided tour to the national park.

A typical route is up the Big Thompson to Drake and then up the North Fork of the “Big T” to Estes Park on Devil’s Gulch Road, entering the park near the historic MacGregor Ranch and the worldrenowned Stanley Hotel.

In Northern Colorado, Rawah Ranch is located in one of the most scenic and unspoiled valleys in North America.

Experience spectacular fly fishing on private waters, backcountry horseback rides, cookouts under the stars, sing-alongs, square dancing and more.

If the desert holds a special place in your heart, Elkhorn Ranch in Arizona lies an hour’s drive south from Tucson in the wide-open working landscape of the Altar Valley. When you look south you’ll see triangular Baboquivari Peak, sacred to the Tohono O’odham Nation and a landmark visible from throughout the Altar Valley.

Be sure to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum on the edge of Saguaro National Park, along Kinney Road—our favorite place to send Elkhorn Ranch visitors. You can dive into the natural history of the

The Gros Ventre Mountains and Grand Teton National Park tower over the Gros Ventre River Ranch / Dude Ranchers’ Association

Sonoran Desert as you wander through the museum’s lovely gardens and naturally designed wildlife exhibits. Visit Kitt Peak National Observatory and San Xavier del Bac Mission, too!

Stagecoach Trails Ranch in Yucca, Arizona, is only 1.5 hours from Grand Canyon National Park’s West Rim. The rim is a perfect destination for a day trip from the ranch. Located on the Hualapai Indian Reservation, you will get to experience true Native American culture and can even venture out on the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a glass walkway that looks straight down into the abyss. The ranch is only three hours from Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Whatever season you choose to visit a national park, as you can see, a dude ranch is the perfect way to have a family friendly home base while exploring all the natural beauty the West has to offer!

For more information contact The Dude Ranchers Association at www.duderanch.org.

Parting Shot

| Redwood Creek, Redwood National And State Parks | Aidan Cone photo