Stay out of Yosemite NP New Years!

[Drew Wiley]

The routine fence and tree signs where I grew up read, "No Trespassing, Survivors will be prosecuted"; and they meant it. But that's what kept those vast ranches way more pristine than most officially protected parks. What people stupidly praise as "street art" I simply call vandalism, because that is what it is - fouling someone else's property just to make your own mark. Then they get some silly little token fine, if they ever are caught. Heck, give em a toothbrush and some paint remover, and let those brats spend their whole summer scrubbing it off. But sometimes the law does have teeth in it. A gal convicted of spraying rocks in several NP's (stupidly, with her own name), now has a lifetime ban from any of them, or the option of prison time. The ATV idiots who cut through the fence protecting Deep Springs and its highly endangered pupfish - it's the only tiny water hole in the world where that particular species exists - went swimming in there, killed off several of the only 90 fish still left, and happened to leave some soda cans behind. These were DNA tested, the culprits identified, given massive fines plus hard prison time, six years apiece, I think. That's the way it should be - not by outright pardoning range arsonists, commercial antiquities looting rings and commercial game poachers to stir up your "base" with the incentive that now it's going to be fine to act that way. Anarchy is inexcusable. Doubt even the cave painters permitted that; I'm certain they didn't. Some of the figures in them are thousands of years apart; not just anyone was painting in there. Our own parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges belong to the people as a common trust, not for sake of ruination by a mindless few. .. But no, moving to Mars is no answer, even if accessible water is found there. Why colonize a planet with very limited resources that will inevitably be ruined by us a thousand times faster than this one?

[tgtaylor]

Barstow and Bakersfield: The two armpits of California!

Barstow was a historic stop along the legendary Route 66 and is also an entrance into the Mojave Desert. I was on a road trip the night Saddam Hussein was hanged and watched the developments from a motel room in Barstow until the wee hours of the morning when he was finally hanged. Bakersfield, while not a SF or LA, played a significant part in California history.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

Barstow and Iraq desert under siege from gritty blowing sand, same place. Bakersfield is an outpost of Texas, but with the advantage of having high mountains and splendid wildflowers amidst solitude just a half hour away, either direction. It's the only place in this country I'm aware of where someone started their car engine and blew up themselves, due to the density of flammable air pollution from a nearby refinery. If Merle Haggard thought of Bakersfield as the promised land, I'd sure as heck hate to see where he came from. Lots of history indeed - the whole Dust Bowl story and tragic Oakie exodus afterwards, followed by Grapes of Wrath labor conditions. SF had an enormous role in CA history. Once gold was discovered, it mushroomed into the "Paris of the West", by far the largest city of the West in fact, back when LA was still a tiny saloon brawl waypoint, and the site of Bakersfield was still an inland swamp. Thousands of Indians had once lived on the shores of Tulare Lk, but then the Spanish genocided most of them using fire on their tule huts, and dragged the survivors to nearby coastal Missions. CA has history, even if unwritten, easily going back 15,000 yrs or more. There were "Route 66" trade routes throughout the West back when mastodons were still roaming about. But when it comes to White men's mining claims, yeah, there's some interesting ghost town stuff outside Barstow too, and some nice desert. But it has a bad enough reputation for being nowhere sufficient to make it the only place in the West where toxic e-waste is sent for legal dismantling. A new highway patrolman was assigned to Hwy 41 between Coarsegold and the Yosemite south entrance, a quite desirable location for that kind of career. There was a semi-tame deer hanging around the highway attracting attention, with people stopping and backing traffic up. So one day the Patrolman pulled out his revolver and shot it. The locals were infuriated and demanded punishment, but what he had done was perfectly legal. So what the Hwy Patrol did is give him a "promotion" and transfer him to Barstow - purgatory!

[Tin Can]

You make my point.

Thanks!

[Drew Wiley]

Now, now, Randy... I know you're coveting a second career as a Highway Patrolman, but they do have certain standards...

[ic-racer]

Good news is that I don't recall forest fires, graffiti, vandalism, human feces, trash or rock-stacking in the park near me. However, I needed a half-stop bellows compensation to capture the majestic waterfall; it is only six inches high...

[Drew Wiley]

That would look like Niagara Falls to an ant, so it's all relative. Besides, it's fun to fool people with scale. You should have put a little plastic Monopoly Hotel or model railroad building at the edge.

[Fred L]

JT vandalism. not sure if this posted here or not, but damn, some people couldn't give two Fxs about national parks.

https://www.nationalparkstraveler.or...-illegal-roads

[Leszek Vogt]

Usually (but not always) it's the local perps. I have no clue what justifies their actions ?

Les

[Drew Wiley]

It's just the way ATV culture is. They think desert is for the purpose of tearing up under tires tracks, and are highly resentful of any public protection. Just like taggers. One thing that worked quite well where I came from in Sierra Natl Forest is that they designated 4WD tracks between official Wilderness Areas and NP's to give that form of recreation an opportunity to burn off steam while protecting the rest. It's usually the younger inexperienced crowd that just wants to spin tires and make a mess. By designating 4WD with various degrees of serious difficulty, such people had an incentive to join extant 4WD clubs and learn how to drive difficult routes correctly. If they didn't, neither they nor their vehicles were going to survive very long. Some of these routes were quite difficult and dangerous; you have to know what you're doing. For those who decided to go out an tear apart protected off-road areas with their tires, there were sometimes Rangers hidden at pinch points where they couldn't get past, with serious consequences. I remember a guy getting caught with an ATV inside a Wilderness boundary, yet 18 miles from a paved road. The Ranger pulled his spark plug and told him to push his vehicle all the way back out.