Our National Parks - a love affair!

[Penney H. & Mike E.]

National Parks have been discussed a lot on this forum and many of us have one or several we love to return to. We are very blessed here in WA to have three National Parks. I hope you all tune in on your local PBS station this Sunday, September 27th to the 6 part film by Ken Burns: The National Parks: America's Best Idea. A film that took 6 years to produce, it promises to be a spectacular documentary on the history, uniqueness and beauty of our park system.


I will gush a little here about our recent National Park experience. We just returned from 10 days at Mount Rainier National Park. Here in WA Mt. Rainier is reverently called "The Mountain". It is a truly magnificanet and seen from most places in western WA and many in eastern WA. I (and zillions of others) have always had a love affair with it so to spend 10 days there was wonderful. For the curious, or other Rainier lovers, I have posted photos both on my home page: Life In Woods and on our travel site: Travels with Turtle - Rainier

We stayed in two of the three camp grounds within the Park - White River and Ohanapecosh. (Saw many FGRVs!) I recommend both - White River has a view of the mt. from the river bank and is a short drive to Sunrise, highest (6,400 ft.) place you can drive to in the park. Ohanpecosh is in lovely tall timbers and closer to Paradise, the other place you can drive to to be up close and personal with The Mountain. There is more I could say about all these places, but I will restrain myself!

With many national parks closing campgrounds for winter, watching the PBS film is a way to enjoy our parks and plan next year's trips! Tell your friends, have a park party and watch it together! It runs for 6 nights, you can also purchase the DVD.

Penney

P.S. A few photo teasers from Mt. Rainier National Park, the trailer photo is at the Ohanapecosh campground.

[brian m.]

Beautiful photos!

[April Wilcox]

I have watched the clips on PBS.org but we don't watch broadcast TV at home, so I am sad to miss this one. Hopefully it will come out on DVD or something later on. Another series to watch is the Planet Earth, a collection of DVD's about hard to reach places in nature around the world. Amazing!

[Tom Trostel]

We plan to watch Episode One tonight and record all the others for later viewing. The television critics are giving the PBS Ken Burns series rave reviews.

[Kevin K]

Check it out here
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/

http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/watch-video/#642

[Frederick L. Simson]

I watched all of the episodes. My PBS station is repeating the series. I learned a lot...