USA! USA! USA!

2010 appears to be turning into the year of domestic travel. There was Utah. And in the next few months, I'm planning trips to St. Louis, Orlando, and Dallas/Austin. Whew. (Funny, I purchased 3 round trip plane tickets to different destinations in a 24 hour period and my credit card company did not red flag my account. Hmmmm...)

 

To be honest, I haven't seen enough of the U.S.--I generally try to leave the country whenever possible. But in Utah, I had a "proud to be American" moment: there were a ton of European tourists at the national parks, and I realized what a fantastic--and diverse--landscape we have here in the good ol' USA. Sure, while I was at Arches I watched as an overweight sunburnt American father in a tank top caught a small lizard and gave it to his overweight sunburnt daughter to carry along the trail. This enraged me more than when I see flash photography in an art museum, but I was too hot, dehydrated and out of breath (totally blame the elevation, not my fitness level) to yell at them.

We may not win the World Cup, but America is still beautiful, dammit.

So, in the spirit of America the beautiful, here are some facts about our National Parks Service (NPS):

• The NPS was created in 1916. It oversees all the National Parks, some National Monuments and other lands, including National Heritage Sites.  
• The NPS oversees 84 million acres of land (!), divided across 392 areas. The largest is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska (13.2 million acres) and the smallest is Thaddeus Kosciusko National Memorial in Pennsylvania (0.2 acre). I have been to neither of these.
• The NPS sees over 275 million visitors annually
• There are currently 58 National Parks . Yellowstone was the first to get that status back in 1872 (yes, even before the NPS was established).  National Parks are established only by an act of Congress--and not just any land is designated as a NP. There are four criteria that have to be met:
• It is an outstanding example of a particular type of resource.
• It possesses exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the natural or cultural themes of our Nation's heritage.
• It offers superlative opportunities for recreation, for public use and enjoyment, or for scientific study. 
• It retains a high degree of integrity as a true, accurate, and relatively unspoiled example of the resource.

U! S! A!