You’re now free to carry guns in U.S. national parks

by Kraig Becker on

For nearly 95 years visitors to U.S. national parks have been prohibited from carrying firearms. In fact, the ban even extended to Teddy Roosevelt, who was once refused entry to Yellowstone while carrying a shotgun. But that ban was lifted yesterday when a new law went into effect allowing visitors to bring their guns along with them the next time they decide to visit Old Faithful or climb Half Dome.

The new law was passed as a rider bill to a credit card reform act that cleared Congress last May and was later signed by President Obama. It specifies that people who can legally own guns, and have completed the proper permitting process, can now bring their firearms with them to national parks. The law is superseded by the state laws in which the park falls however, meaning that some of the national parks will continue to have a ban on firearms.

The passage of the new law does not change the prohibition of the usage of firearms within the park, nor does it impact the ban on hunting within most parks. The Park Service also wisely points out that the ban on carrying the weapons still extends to “federal facilities,” which in this context includes visitor centers, offices, and maintenance buildings.

For their part, the NPS doesn’t believe this new law will have much of an impact on the vast majority of visitors to the parks. But just in case, they’ve updated their website providing all the specific information on each park and how the gun laws apply to that location.

Trapped in Vegas? Day trip escapes from Sin City

by Darren Murph on

If you came here looking for little-known secrets of Sin City that may actually help you stomach a place you currently loathe, you’ve come to the wrong place. Don’t get us wrong — Las Vegas is a real hoot if you’re into certain things. Things like mind-blowing shows, more live music than you can shake a stick at, gambling galore and some of the world’s best eateries. But believe it or not, Vegas isn’t the end-all destination for every traveler. It’s also not the best destination for business travelers, but as I’ve personally found with covering the Consumer Electronics Show, sometimes your job just lands you here. Thankfully, there’s loads to see and do just outside of Vegas, and if your company pays to get you into McCarran International Airport, you might as well use any available downtime to your advantage.

Despite the local government’s best efforts to clean things up in southern Nevada and make Las Vegas more of a “family friendly” destination, there’s still a good deal of unbecoming aspects that are impossible to avoid. Driving on Paradise Road and seeing glorified advertisements for call-girls isn’t exactly the greatest way to start one’s morning, and frankly, there’s only so much alcohol to be drank, cigarettes to be smoked and money to be lost. If you’ve found yourself bored with the so-called Entertainment Capital of the World, we’ve got a few drastic diversions that are all just a day trip away — all of which are markedly cheaper than indulging in yet another played-out show or overpriced restaurant. Read on if you’re dying to escape.Lake Mead National Recreation Area

Just a half hour southeast of the city lies one of Nevada’s (and Arizona’s, to be fair) greatest treasures. If driving south to north on Highways 147 and 167 — which we recently did on our road trip around America’s Southwest region — you can go from one end to the other in around an hour. Thankfully, you’ll find a plethora of pullouts, hiking trails and picnic areas along the way, which should be enough to help you make a day of things. Due to the combination of desert ecosystems in the area (and the placement of Lake Mead and Lake Mohave), you’ll come across a surprisingly varied amount of flora. You’ll also be taken aback by the miles of mountains and overall peacefulness — a far cry from the intense hustle and bustle that you just left.

Cost: $5 per vehicle (covers up to 5 consecutive days)

Valley of Fire State Park

Conveniently positioned to the west of the northernmost section of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, this park is a natural landing point for those who aren’t quite ready to fight the Vegas traffic after an already delightful morning in the desert mountains. Even if you drive straight here, it’s just an hour from the city center. An expanse of mountains and red sandstone formations are littered about, offering visitors a great chance to work on their photography skills, hike, camp or toss a blanket out and have a picnic. And let’s be honest — any of those options beat spending another day in the City of Lights, right?

Cost: $5 per vehicle entry fee

Hoover Dam

Located about 45 minutes southeast of Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam is a must-see. You’ll need to allow for lots of traffic and a potential multi-hour wait, but the reward of seeing one of the most historic hydroelectric power plants in America (if not the world) is well worth it. You’d be doing yourself a huge disservice to pass this one up if you’re already so close (and so anxious to get out).

Cost: $8 per person

Red Rock Canyon

Situated only 25 minutes northwest of the city, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is a world away from the high frequency Vegas atmosphere, a serene, bucolic landscape where one can jump out of the car, hike around the massive, sandstone features and drink in the sprawling views of the Keystone Thrust.

Cost: $5 per vehicle

Death Valley National Park

A National Park just a day-trip away from Las Vegas? You bet. California’s own “Land of Extremes” offers up a veritable plethora of sights. From desert landscapes to snow-spotted mountains, you’ll find numerous faces of nature just 2 hours of 45 minutes away from the city you can’t wait to evade.

Cost: $20 per vehicle (covers up to 7 consecutive days)

Mojave National Preserve

If the heat of Death Valley frightens you, maybe the sand dunes at Mojave National Preserve sound a bit more inviting. This area — which sits just 1.5 hours away in the south of California — also houses wildflowers, Joshua tree forests and a government promise of “serenity and solitude from the crowds of major metropolitan areas.” Funny — that’s exactly what you were searching for, wasn’t it?

Cost: Free!

Zion National Park

It’s nearly 3 hours away in the south of Utah, but for the early risers in attendance, that’s hardly enough to deter you from spending a day at one of America’s most gorgeous National Parks. Monolithic red rock formations and canyons that rival the best offered in northern Arizona are everywhere, and in the winter, the snow adds even more character to a place that already feels alive.

Cost: $25 per vehicle (covers up to 7 consecutive days)

Got even more time? The 5 hour drive to the infrequently visited North Rim of the Grand Canyon is a no-brainer, as is a visit to Cedar Breaks National Monument and Bryce Canyon National Park. If you’re looking to book a week’s vacation following your business trip to explore the Southwest, we admire your ability to make the most of a Vegas situation. Thankfully for you, we’ve got a guide to cover that as well.

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Road Trip Tips: researching and planning to pinch pennies

by Darren Murph on

Let’s face it: road trips are becoming less and less common in America. We’ve got (near) record-high fuel prices, a pressure on us to work more and take less time off (thanks, recession) and more entertainment options than ever before close to our homes. Put simply, road trips aren’t nearly as easy to take as they’ve been in the past, but they’re just as awe-inspiring today as they’ve always been.

If you’ve been looking to burn a few weeks of banked vacation, spend a bit of quality time with your family, see a few long-lost relatives elsewhere in the country and mark one or two more of your Bucket List items off, there’s no better way to accomplish all of that than by packing your Winnebago (or whatever vehicle resides in your garage) and hitting the highways. Despite what you may believe, you just might have enough in savings to pull off your dream road trip, and we’ve got a few tips beyond the break that’ll save you bundles along the way. Just be prepared to put in the legwork during the “planning” phase.Plan your routes around family and friends

Lodging is undoubtedly one of the biggest expenses when it comes to making a road trip happen. Sure, some of you may be able to rough it in tents along the way, but for families who need amenities like hot breakfasts, showers and actual bedding, there’s no quicker way to drain your road trip account than by shacking up in the Embassy Suites each night. Our suggestion? Plan your stops around friends and family who won’t mind you staying a night or two. Asking distant relatives to use their home for over three days can come across as demanding and imposing, but most anyone with a soul will let you crash for one or two days. If planned right, you can stay a day with a friend for free (or a small — and recommended — donation) and then the next night in a hotel. If you repeat this one-and-one strategy, you’ve just cut your hotel costs in half, all while getting the opportunity to catch up with folks that probably mean a lot to you.

Stop eating out so much

It’s a fact of life that we all must eat. But choosing to eat at a restaurant three times per day is murder on the bank account. We recommend stocking up on groceries from the outset, using healthy snacks and fruits to fill your belly during the day in order to bridge the gap between breakfast and supper. If you keep yourself occupied during the daylight hours, it’s even easier to get by on a granola bar and banana while waiting for a serious meal at night. Even cutting out one full meal per day can save you a significant amount over the course of your trip.

Drive something with great fuel economy

Unless you’re planning a trip through blizzard-like conditions, you should really choose your Corolla over the Commander when embarking on a multi-thousand mile trip. Over the course of the journey, using a car that gets 35MPH on the highway instead of one that’s lucky to get 20MPG can save you hundreds of dollars in fuel costs. You’re probably saying that you just can’t fit everything into your “small car.” We’d suggest packing lighter, and using those aforementioned stops at houses to wash your clothes.

Flying to your start point? Search for nearby airports

Planning to start your trip in Minneapolis and eventually make your way down to the Dakotas? Don’t just blindly book airline tickets to MSP. Kayak.com allows your to search nearby airports, and better still, you can do your own research to scout out lesser-known airstrips within driving range of your intended origination point. We were planning such a trip recently, and we found that we could save over $100 per ticket by flying into Madison, Wisconsin. That’s just 4.5 hours away by car, and it gives us an even greater excuse to explore the Badger State.

Renting a car? Do your research

We recently embarked on a Southwest road trip which started in Las Vegas, Nevada. Believe it or not, there are literally scores of car rental outlets in Sin City, and the vast majority of them aren’t connected to McCarran International Airport. Car rentals get really, really interesting (and expensive, too) when you have a drop-off location that’s different than your pick-up location, and prices vary wildly from carrier to carrier and location to location. For this example, we wanted to leave from Vegas and drop the vehicle off in San Antonio eight days later.

We spent hours scouring the web’s best price searching engines (Kayak.com gets our recommendations), and what we found was downright astounding. This same itinerary could cost us upwards of $1,500 or as little as $598 depending on the company and the pick-up location, and that was searching for the cheapest car class across the board. There’s simply no avoiding the “one-way drop fee” that skyrockets the cost of a rental car if you don’t drop it off at the same location that you picked it up at. It’s a sad fact of life, but if you use these other tips to save in other areas, this fee becomes a wee bit easier to absorb.

We eventually found that Hertz, in this particular situation, was the cheapest option. But when picking up at McCarran International Airport (which is actually a shuttle bus ride away from the airpot — not exactly the epitome of convenience), the cheapest we could rent a Toyota Corolla for the eight days was around $800. Hertz has around a dozen other rental outlets scattered about the City of Lights, most of which are within hotels and casinos. We put our request into each and every Hertz hotel / casino location in Las Vegas until we found the cheapest one: The Riveria. For reasons unknown, this pickup location — just minutes away from the $800 LAS lot — was over $200 cheaper for the trip.

We should also mention that essentially every car rental company adds a fee (usually around 10 percent, sometimes higher) to your rental when picking up at an airport facility. If you can somehow get away from the airport and pick your ride up at a satellite facility, the cost savings can be tremendous. Obviously, each and every scenario is different (another search of ours found Hertz to be the most expensive option, as an example), so it’s on you to research the options intently. We’d also recommend renting the smallest car that’ll fit your needs in order to get the best gas mileage — you’re about to roll some for hours on end each day, and you could use the MPG improvement.

Take a GPS system

This day and age, you’d be crazy to take off without a GPS. TomTom even has a feature on its newest units (IQ Routes) that intelligently finds the most fuel efficient route when you plug in your destination, and beyond that, not getting lost saves you both time and money. And it keeps you sane, which is always a good thing on a vacation. These are also fantastic for plotting spontaneous trips during the day; on our recent journey across the Southwest, we found ourselves with more time than expected on one given day. We knew that US 163 was a must-see, so we simply plugged in “Bluff, UT” from our current location at the Four Corners. The GPS routed us back into Utah where we could easily pick up our desired highway and head down to Monument Valley State Park.

A secondary option here would be a smartphone with a great mapping system (any Android-based phone or an iPhone comes to mind), as these provide great visuals and can jar your memory of off-the-wall places that you’d like to visit. And besides — visiting beautiful sections of America just to gaze costs little or no money.

Take advantage of the National Parks

We can’t shout this loudly enough: whatever country you’re in, the National Parks are there for your enjoyment. They’re your parks, and your tax dollars are paying for their preservation. The least you could do would be to stop by and see how your monies are being spent. On a more serious note, National Parks currently stand as some of the cheapest entertainment options on the road today. Many parks are free to enjoy, while most are under $15 for a five to seven day pass. Even the few that are over $20 (Joshua Tree National Park comes to mind) are easily worth it, and considering that two theater tickets in any mid-sized city will run you more than that for two hours of enjoyment, you can see that there’s still a great deal of value in the National Park system.

Our personal experience is this: I don’t really remember exactly how much fun I had at Busch Gardens two years ago, but I can tell you for sure that I spent over $130 on two people just to get in and not starve while I was there. I spent under $40 on a trip to Grand Canyon National Park (including gas from a family’s home that was two hours away), and I’ll remember those images for the rest of my adult life. It’s incredibly simple to burn a whole day inside one National Park, and chances are you’ll wish you had even more time once you’re there.

[Images provided by Dana Jo Photography]

Why you should visit National Parks in the off-season

by Darren Murph on

So, you missed out on those fee-free weekends at the National Parks last year? Don’t sweat it — you didn’t miss much. As with anything that’s both free and open to the public, those weekends drew huge crowds. And while gratis is always nice, fighting the crowds is decidedly not. The way we see it, America’s pristine National Park system is best enjoyed with as little ambient noise as possible. After all, entering these parks gives you a chance to really connect with nature and to simply soak in some of the most beautiful regions of the country. Good luck trying to soak anything in with hordes of tourists surrounding you, kids wailing about their PSP battery dying and crowded roadways leading to the entrance.

For better or worse, most National Parks turn into circuses (or zoos, if you prefer that visual) during the warmer months. Particularly in the flagship parks (Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, Great Smoky Mountains, etc.), the summer months lead to bumper-to-bumper traffic, waiting lines at scenic pulloffs, and a general sense of frustration. Call us crazy, but that doesn’t exactly sound like the ideal National Park experience.

Thankfully for you, there’s a solution. Go now.The winter months are undoubtedly the time to visit, and for a number of reasons. For starters, you’ll find fewer people around you. In essence, you get more of the park to “yourself,” with more room to explore areas that you find particularly interesting. There’s also less waiting at the entrance, no queues for snapping shots at gorgeous overlooks and no added stress. There’s also the distinct chance that you’ll see magnificent sites covered in snow, which certainly adds a touch of character to things and gives your shots a lot more color.

We recently visited the south rim of the Grand Canyon National Park, and we’d be shocked if 50 other vehicles were at the park. Generous portions were drizzled with a light dusting of snow, but all of the roads were perfectly clear and all of the trails were open for exploration. There’s also the huge benefit of being able to drive yourself up and down Hermit Road. For those unaware, Hermit Road is a seven mile stretch that bends around the south rim, and it provides stunning overlooks over a great variety of points around the canyon. You’ll feel as if you’re looking at completely different canyons when moving from pullout to pullout, and it’s a real joy to cruise at your leisure, pull off at each stop and gaze at the new angles presented to you. Here’s the kicker: it’s only open to public vehicles in December, January and February. The rest of the year, you’ll be forced to park your ride and hop on a shuttle with scads of others. Don’t get us wrong — we appreciate the green aspect of using public transportation, but having the autonomy to drive yourself really enriches the experience.

We also stopped by Arches National Park in Utah, and we were able to secure rare shots of Delicate Arch surrounded by snow. The 1.5 mile hike was also made more difficult (and in turn, entirely more fun) by forcing us to trudge through the white stuff while attempting to scout out the next trailhead. We only passed three couples on the march to the top. It felt less like following school kids in a single-file line and more like blazing our own trail up a mountain. Be honest with yourself — which option would you prefer? To contrast this, we visited Yosemite in the dead of summer last year, and even during the recession, the main highway (US 120) that crosses from east to west was jammed, and we had a much tougher time locating spots for pictures in which no people were around.

Finally, heading to National Parks in the off-season will save you big bucks on travel. Flights are typically cheaper, hotels are definitely cheaper (our 2-bedroom room at the Best Western Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel was literally 50 percent less expensive than the summer rate), and you won’t have to pay peak prices when it comes time to pick up a souvenir. If you’ve got some vacation time that you’ve been dying to burn, there’s no better time to make a National Park run than right now. These gems weren’t meant to have a theme park vibe to ’em, and all of that serenity you’ve been dreaming of will be a lot easier to find if you make the off-season your season.

[Images provided by Dana Jo Photography]

All roads to Yosemite National Park closed

by Kraig Becker on

The National Park Service has announced that all roads leading into Yosemite National Park are currently closed due to excessive snow and ice, as well as fallen trees in the area. The roads were officially closed last night and will be reevaluated throughout the day today to determine when access to the park can be restored.

Winter storms hit the Yosemite region on Thursday dumping loads of fresh snow across the park. The valley floor reportedly received two feet of accumulation, which pales in comparison to other locations. For instance, Badger Pass received as much as eight to ten feet of new snow and Tuolumne Meadows also received six feet of fresh powder.

Those planning on visiting the park this weekend are encouraged to call the 24-hour road conditions hot line at 209-372-0200 to determine the current status of access to Yosemite. Additionally, all vehicles that do enter the park over the next few days are required to carry snow chains and be prepared to deal with rapidly changing conditions that could include more falling trees.

Yosemite National Park, located along the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is a popular hiking and climbing destination throughout the year, offering more than 1200 square miles of landscapes to explore, including high peaks, remote valleys, and lush forests.