National Parks Are Fee-Free June 9 To Celebrate Get Outdoors Day

by Kraig Becker on

America’s national parks will once again waive all entry fees next Saturday, June 9, in celebration of National Get Outdoors Day. Visitors to any one of the more than 397 national parks, memorials and monuments across the U.S. will be granted free entrance all day long.

National Get Outdoors Day was created five years ago as an effort to encourage more Americans to go outside and enjoy nature. The event has become a collaboration between federal agencies, nonprofit organizations and the recreation industry who all work together to promote a variety of outdoor experiences. While these efforts are aimed at the U.S. population as a whole, the focus is on getting first time visitors to take advantage of public lands, as well as reconnecting young people to the outdoors.

In addition to fee-free entry to the national parks, there are 122 official National Get Outdoors Day locations spread out across the U.S. Each of these locations will play host to a number of scheduled events throughout the day and they offer further opportunities to celebrate the occasion. For instance, those living near Highlands Ranch, Colorado, can join the First Annual Backcountry Community Campout, while residents of New Jersey may want to visit Field Station: Dinosaurs to get in on the fun.

Even if you aren’t able to visit a national park or take advantage of one of these events, remind yourself to get outside on June 9. Summer is here and it’s the weekend, so there are no excuses for not participating.

This is the last fee-free day at the national parks until September 29, so take advantage of it while you can. For a complete list of the parks that will waive the entry fee on June 9 click here.

Photographers Launch Postcards Across America Project

by Meg Nesterov on

If you think postcards are a lost art, you may want to follow a photography project covering America this summer. Starting tomorrow, two Brooklyn-based photographers will set off on a three-month road trip across the country, sending original postcards with their photographs from each state. Going Nowhere was originally a project to visit all 48 lower states, sharing their experiences via photographs and hand-made postcards.

Funded through Kickstarter, backers could pledge as little as $2 to cover the cost of printing and postage (the trip itself will be paid for by the photographers themselves), but after reaching their original $7,500 funding goal, they decided to hit up Hawaii and Alaska too. Original backers will receive a postcard created, self-printed, and mailed from each state, and box sets of 10-50 postcards will be available after they finish the trip in September.

Follow the journey and photo updates, or buy a box set of the postcards on Going Nowhere.

Vanishing America: The Drive-In Theater

by Sean McLachlan on


It’s one of the icons of American civilization, combining Hollywood with car culture. The drive-in movie theater was once a mainstay of every American city, and plenty of small rural towns too. In the 1950s there were more than 4,000 of them. They were a place for families to enjoy a night out together, and for teenagers to be initiated into the games of adulthood.

Now the drive-in theater has fallen on hard times. According to The United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, there are currently only 366 drive-ins in the United States with a total of 606 screens. The states with the most theaters are Pennsylvania (33) and Ohio (31). Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii and Louisiana sadly have no drive-ins. Many other states are in a precarious position with only one or two.

Competition from cable TV and movie rentals along with rising real estate costs have seriously hurt the drive-in theater industry, yet it clings to life. It’s gone from that great American hero – the success story – to that other great American hero – the underdog.

The first drive-in opened in New Jersey in 1933 and the idea soon caught on. Their heyday came in the economic boom years of the 1950s and ’60s. They began to feel the pinch in the 1970s with the spread of more TV channels. With VCRs and cable TV becoming popular in the late 1970s and early ’80s, things got even worse.

%Gallery-155976%Now most drive-ins are gone. Others have remained as spooky abandoned lots that offer the photographers in this article’s gallery the chance to lend atmosphere to their images. Visiting a dead drive-in theater is a bit like visiting a ghost town. It leaves you wondering about the people who used to spend time there.

Unlike with ghost towns, many of us can remember being one of those people. I remember going to the DeAnza Drive-in in Tucson, Arizona. My friend and I used to put a futon on top of her VW van and watch movies under the Arizona starlight. The DeAnza is gone now, and all that’s left is a webpage of memories.

But don’t despair, movie fans, there’s hope. The remaining drive-ins are keeping the flame lit. There are places like Hollywood Drive-in, which has been showing movies on Route 66 near Troy, New York, since 1952. New technologies like video projection are making it easier to open up drive-ins in any location where there’s a blank wall or the space for a screen. My favorite indie cinema, Ragtag Cinema in Columbia, Missouri, has done some outdoor shows in a nearby parking lot. Check out the photo gallery to see a cool Belgian drive-in using an inflatable screen.

As the great Joe Bob Briggs always says, “The drive-in will never die!”

(Clarification: The Hollywood Drive-in is on New York State Route 66, not the more famous Route 66. Plenty of businesses in New York like to play off the Route 66 designation, though, and why not? Retro entertainment is more important than nitpicking!)

Video: Maori Creation Story Told In Sand Art

by Sean McLachlan on


One of the great things about exploring other cultures is hearing their stories. The world is filled with myths, legends, fables, anecdotes, histories, jokes and all sorts of other oral traditions. Some traditional storytellers keep to the old ways, while others, like this sand artist, have taken on new methods to tell age-old tales.

Marcus Winter is a Maori artist who opened up the 2010 Original Art Sale in New Zealand by retelling a traditional Maori creation story. Through his work we see the world being formed when the children of Ranginui, the Sky Father, and Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother, separate their parents and set off a chain reaction that creates the world and, of course, New Zealand.

Stories are living things. They take on new forms to adapt to the times and perpetuate themselves through the ages. I’m glad that artists like Winter are taking their ancient tales and giving them a modern twist.

Video: Lunch In A Village In Burkina Faso

by Sean McLachlan on


It’s lunchtime in Taga, a village in Burkina Faso, West Africa. A guy is milking the cows and the women are working over the stove. Kids are running around making noise and getting in the way. It’s just like lunch at my house – well, not quite.

That’s what I love about this video. There are so many similarities – the laughing kids, the idle chatter, taking some time off work in the middle of the day to enjoy family – that I can almost forget the thatched huts and chickens. The greatest thing travel teaches us is how similar people are under all the superficial differences.

One of the bigger differences is the slow pace of life in this village. It’s a tranquil video too – great for inspiring relaxation on your own lunch break. For a different look at life in the same country, check out this video of driving through the capital Ouagadougou.

By the way, anyone out there know what the gray seeds are that the woman is putting in the milk?