Many Parks are Open

According to both that National Park System and news services, many of the national parks are currently open, despite the governmental shut down. These parks includes Arches, Zion and Bryce in Utah, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, and Yosemite in California, and possibly many others . We don't have a definitive list.

But we have also read many reports of people in these parks making a mess and a mockery of them: littering, deliberately flouting the rules, and generally being idiots.

So two things:

If you go, please follow the rules and don't be one of those idiots. The parks are our national patrimony, and anything done to damage them is a crime against all of us--including you.

And if you see someone doing something illegal or stupid at one of the national parks, take a photo or a video. The fact that there is no law enforcement right now does not make illegal things suddenly legal. And with documented proof, those idiots can still be prosecuted. A ranger once suggested to us that taking a video or photo directly might be too confrontational, so she suggested taking a selfie--with the idiots in the background.