Yosemite -- Beautiful and Expensive

Yosemite National Park -- My family has visited dozens of great national parks through the years, from the Everglades to the Olympic, but Yosemite will always be my favorite. The scenery, even when stuck in heavy traffic, is beyond stunning. 

Get out and hike -- if you can find a place to park-- and you will never forget the experience.

As beautiful as it is, sometimes visiting there can be troubling. Particularly if you arrive during peak summer months or happen to be a low income family.  Be prepared to pay a lot, and be crowded.

With crowds,  cars,  past management decisions and global warming the park now can be a nightmare on a hot August day. 

 It is no bargain anytime for average American families. 

And beyond the reach of the truly poor. 

A minimum wage worker in America would have to spend a full day's wages, even  bringing a picnic, just to be there for one day.

It is essentially a park where the wealthy, including foreign visitors, are treated as special guests and encouraged to stay. And that is entirely consistent with the park's history. When first discovered only the very rich from San Francisco, the east coast and Europe, could afford the expensive journey. It was a special place, mostly for the elite. Still is.

Today getting there is not the problem. Staying there is.

  One week at the Yosemite Lodge -- the only basic ""motel" inside the park -- would cost a family of four between $1,400 and $2,100 dollars, probably more. 

If you can get in.

 Meals at the limited eating places near the hotels could cost another $1,000 or so.

One week at the Ahwahnee Hotel, the park's iconic lodging place, today can cost a couple between $4,000 and $5,000. It is a grand looking hotel, even if the rooms are not special and the service lacking. Our recent lunch of hamburgers was $50.

In theory the rates are supposed to be comparable to facilities near the park. In reality park administrators have used destination resort areas like Tahoe and San Francisco, even Disney, not Mariposa or Merced. It is a stupid system.
 

The grand lobby of the Ahwahnee

The dining hall--bring money

Other housing in Yosemite is available only if you are lucky and diligent. There are campgrounds, housekeeping units (a three-sided canvas shelter), tent cabins, and a very few real cabins. You have to plan  months ahead. Demand always outweighs capacity. Most are unavailable half the year.

 Campground spots are so competitive that experienced visitors typically set the alarm clock and jump on the Internet the moment the window for reservations opens --  several months ahead. 

Half the year the vast majority of campsites are completely closed   while the most expensive lodge rooms and hotel remain open and operating. The limited camping spots are almost always  booked way ahead, including the  very few available in winter in the Valley. 

At a time when there are normally no crowds -- a relative term -- the park service jams people into less and less space. My estimate is that non-luxury available housing in the Valley is reduced about 90% for six months of the year.

The park service web site claims more than 1,500 campsites are available in the park, capable of housing almost 9,000 people.  

That is misleading. Perhaps deliberately. 

That number of people assumes most campsites  average six people, an unrealistic number. Three to four is probably accurate.

And then most are closed for half the year.

This November  only one campground was open for car campers in the Valley, plus the small mountain climber's camp, probably with less than 100 total sites and room for about 400 people total.  Other campgrounds, including many below the snow line, were closed for the season. 

A lack of employees due to Covid restrictions affected 2021 numbers.

But Covid is not the real  problem. Population growth and management decisions are. 

 The trend throughout the last four decades consistently has been to shut down the least expensive places to stay the night, and maintain  the most expensive. It's all about revenue, a position the park service finds itself in due to a lack of congressional support and pressure from concessionaires and politicians.

 

Not far from the Ahwahnee, a resident bear

The 150 year history of Yosemite is a classic American tale, including greed, failures, violence, triumph and some success. In the 1800s it was the natives who lived there that were run off. Today it is average American families who pay taxes.  And increasingly, it is the people who drive up to the gate, willing to pay to get in. 

Tour groups and people who use travel agencies get access. They pay more.

 Deciding how the park should operate in the interest of the public has always been a challenge. It remains so today. In the 1800s, prompted by glorious paintings and photographs, Abraham Lincoln set the space aside -- preserving it forever -- and asked California to manage it. The state chased off the early settlers, ignored the natives, and mismanaged it to the point the federal government finally took it back. 

Eventually the National Park Service was given the responsibility to manage Yosemite.

Hiking toward Mirror Lake

It has never been an easy task, and even today there are so many competing voices the future of the park remains uncertain. Congress pats itself on the back for supporting national parks, but provides so little funding the public is asked to pay constantly increasing fees for everything from entrance fees to places to stay to hamburgers. 

The congressional representative of the district that includes the park generally opposes spending any money on anything to make the situation better.  

Outside of a few urban-based environmental non-profits and some employee groups, the park has no effective advocates.

Close to the old stables

 The park's senior management has historically struggled, often forced to make hard choices between protecting the park for the public and bowing to the commercial interests who make money on it. 

 Part of the problem is the mission to "preserve and protect" both the natural wonders and the public's access. 

Too often the natural wonders are protected, but access for the very people who pay for the park is increasingly difficult. 

Where you can wait for dinner

Next: More history of the struggles of the park

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Note: Data from NPS:

Campgrounds

• Yosemite Valley Family Sites: 459 sites accommodating 2,754 people (Note: only one Valley family campground is open for six months of the year)
• Tioga Road/Big Oak Flat/Hetch Hetchy: 856 sites for 5,136 people (Note: All of these sites are closed.)
• 
  
• Glacier Point/Wawona: 206 sites for 1,236 people (now closed)
• Group campsites: 14 group campsites (for 420 people); and 9 horse campsites (54 people) (Closed)

Source: NPS website

Congress can change, really!

another century, similar views -- from the Library of Congress

Murphys, Ca  -- About the only thing U.S. citizens agree upon these days is that Congress is awful.
Not as in “awe-inspiring,” but as in “terrible.”
Congress is less popular than the media.
Congress is even less popular than the President.
We all have different reasons for disliking Congress, or our congressional representative, but at least we can all agree they collectively do a lousy job.

So, I think it is time to reform Congress, and it should not be too hard to do. Change a few laws.  Change a few rules.

Here are a few ideas and reforms that kept me awake last night, and I would appreciate it if you who read this will take the time to express your opinion, either in the comments section below, or on Facebook, or on a local soap box. Just speak up.

1.  Let’s get serious about time limits for the House and Senate. I propose two four-year terms for House representatives, and two six year terms for the U.S. Senate.  These suggestions are not unique: President Eisenhower begged us to make this change as he ended his tenure in office. He cited the same reasons we would:  every congressman is always running for reelection and therefore does not devote time and energy to the job at hand. They are too busy pandering to would-be voters to do what is right and necessary.
You can pick your own example, but there are many. We have way too many old white guys (like me) making decisions. Let the younger folks have a shot.

2.  Change the congressional pay to be less of an incentive. Today the House members get a base salary of $174,000. The average U.S. wage earner makes $44, 321.67. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and  pay them twice what most of use make: around $88,000 per year should be about right. (The first representatives got $6 a day, but only for days they worked.) You may have noticed that Congressmen are mostly rich, averaging a million dollars a year from private and public sources. That’s one reason they don’t act like normal people.

3. We want our elected officials to reflect us, right? So let’s limit the trappings of power that we now spend billions on. Start by limiting every representative to one secretary/administrative assistant, and one staff member, and one taxpayer funded office in Washington and one in the district.  You will note that I have eliminated every “spokesman” we now pay with tax dollars. Let the congressmen we elect speak for themselves.
Have you ever asked your congressman how many people work for him?
Has he ever answered you?

4.  Require representatives to actually work five days a week, 48 weeks a year. I’d be generous and give them the 4 weeks vacation, so long as they pay for travel and accommodations  themselves. That means they have to keep office hours either in Washington or at home districts, just like normal people.

5. Ban all gifts worth more than $25 to  representatives, and staff. They don’t need all those freebies and it looks bad. Stinks, actually.

6. We all understand that running for office takes money, and since we want to be fair, let’s have the same rule apply to all officials: contributions can come from anywhere so long as they do not exceed $25 and the name and employer of the donor are public record.

7. Congressmen complain that they have so little time and so many people want to see them, so let’s help them by setting a rule that says the priority for an appointment goes to a person from their district, second priority to individuals from their state, and last priority to representatives of corporations or organizations (we call them lobbyist).  And to make everyone have a chance, let’s limit all visits to 30 minutes for people they represent, and 15 for lobbyist, whether they are from the corporate timber company or the Sierra Club. Fair's fair.

8. Congressmen need a travel allowance (they actually have a generous one already), so we will let them keep enough to pay for four trips back to the district every year, but ban anyone else paying for or providing transportation. No corporate jets. No limos in New York City. No trips to ski resorts or Hawaii for “consultations.”

9. No relatives on the congressional payroll, any time, anywhere.

10. Since our elected officials are working for our interests, and we are paying them, we need to make sure everything they do while in office is open and visible to the public. That means all correspondence (national security is exempt) is available, all meetings are logged and subjects disclosed, and if minutes are kept, they should be made available to the public, at a charge not to exceed the per page cost at the closest Kinko print shop. Yes, that means e-mails and Facebook postings when done on government time.


This list could go on and on, and surely you have some ideas of your own. Feel free to add them, or challenge these.

Free at last! .... almost

Camp Connell, CA -- One day before the election I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
My mailbox will belong to real mail again, maybe even with messages from friends, instead of over-sized slick sheets telling me how bad some candidate is.
When the telephone rings, there is at least a chance it might be a human being who really wants to talk to me.
I am not uninterested in candidates and propositions on the ballot, but as a reasonably aware adult I am capable of reading and studying away from the barrage of advertising.
Television is another thing altogether, but fortunately we don't turn it on much in our household. At the moment our granddaughter is home with a cold and watching a series of spooky movies on demand, and those seem to be free of political ads. Maybe they have figured out that 13-year-olds do not vote.
But I still have a bad case of pre-election fatigue, and one symptom of that disease is a desire to vote against everybody and everything. I understand that many people get so turned off they simply don't vote, which was exactly the intent of the advertiser.
My biggest concern right now is that this election will be bought by the big corporations that have poured billions into buying friendly congressmen. If it happens, I expect the Republic will survive, but we might be in for another bad decade.
It is a sad commentary on our times that the money spent on buying congress probably could have been spent helping those in need, creating new jobs and taking care of the sick and homeless.
My family will survive whoever wins tomorrow. But I will not vote for those who created this mess, or for propositions that benefit corporations and polluters and tax-evaders.
You can figure that out for yourself if you read the ballot closely, ignore the television, and vote your conscience.

(I'll review the ballot tonight, again, and vote tomorrow. They won't keep me away.)

Have a nice day.