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Badlands

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Our National Parks Are in Trouble & Need Our Help

I imagined a National Park Service employee sitting at a metal desk in a one-room office somewhere in small-town South Dakota saying to no one, “F this. I’m going rogue, y’all.”

And when Death Valley National Park tweeted yesterday about Japanese internment camps on the same day that Donald Trump used executive order to build a wall between America and Mexico, I nearly shat myself.

In this case I imagined that all the National Park Service social media managers jumped on Slack or fax machine to share their plans on how to troll Trump. That effort may have led to the creation of the Twitter account @AltUSNatParkService — “the Unofficial ‘Resistance’ team of U.S. National Park Service” — though news outlets are having a hard time confirming if the account is indeed curated by current National Park Service employees. (AltUsNatParkService announced this morning that they’re passing the reins to activists and journalists.)

Let me just say this: I f’ing love our National Parks.

I’ve (more…)

January 26, 2017 by
Hipstercrite Life, Travel

How Traveling the U.S. Made Me F’ing Love Our National Parks

I must admit: Up until this year I didn’t think much about our national parks.

As a person who appreciates nature, but often stays clear of destinations that draws large crowds, the national parks fell roughly between “meeting Danny DeVito” and “petting a sloth” on my bucket list. (Meaning “nice-to-haves,” not “must-haves.”)

That all changed this summer when a I traveled 5500 miles by car across the great United States of America simply because I’m terrified of flying. And when I say terrified, I mean the last time I took a flight — 3 years ago — I had:

  • Two Xanax
  • Three cocktails
  • One activity tracker that kept telling me my heart rate was over 200 beats per minute.
  • The realization that I was not going to die because of a plane crash but because of a massive heart attack.

Ever since that day, I swore off flying and have strictly traveled by car or train. (You can read about my train travels here.)

So when my mother, a citizen of New York, (more…)

September 19, 2016 by