Try $15 a day for California State Parks and Beaches. Annual is $195.
I think most NC State Parks have no fees (yet), other than the parks with large "lake recreation" areas. Those ones are around $7.50 per car, per day, during the summer. Most of those lakes are big fishing and water-recreation sites - lots of boats, jet-skis, etc. All the State Parks probably have camping fees and some in the mountains have climbing fees. As far as I know, ATVs and motorcycles are not allowed in any State Parks, highway-licensed "off-road" vehicles (SUVs, pick-ups) are allowed on some beaches in the off-season or in specific areas. Alcohol is prohibited in all State Parks.
I am all for getting out in nature. But FSMdamnit, show a little respect. Clean up your $hit. Sure alcohol is a factor, but it's not a license to leave a mess.
I don't know what the answer is. It would take an army of park rangers to patrol everywhere. User fees are one tool: our local state parks are $10/person/day, ouch. I think there are programs to get low-income kids out there too, maybe that's where you start. Get kids on board early...
Ten bucks A DAY?
This user fee is a tool for what, exactly? Seems more like a massive obstacle to getting people out and enjoying parks.
Try $15 a day for California State Parks and Beaches. Annual is $195.
Same but different, down here the entire slate of USFS campgrounds is closedâlockedâall winter. So locals can't use them in the off season even with the day use fee, and can't get into them in high season.
Campgrounds makes sense. No water and keeping an outhouse usable takes some effort, not to mention access and towing stuck RVs out and rescuing hypothermic city dwellers in tents and $15 cloth sleeping bags.
Locals can at least day hike and sleep in their own beds, but I feel ya on the tourist thing. Curse of living in a place you don't need to flee on vacation.
This user fee is a tool for what, exactly? Seems more like a massive obstacle to getting people out and enjoying parks.
Same but different, down here the entire slate of USFS campgrounds is closed—locked—all winter. So locals can't use them in the off season even with the day use fee, and can't get into them in high season.
I am all for getting out in nature. But FSMdamnit, show a little respect. Clean up your $hit. Sure alcohol is a factor, but it's not a license to leave a mess.
I don't know what the answer is. It would take an army of park rangers to patrol everywhere. User fees are one tool: our local state parks are $10/person/day, ouch. I think there are programs to get low-income kids out there too, maybe that's where you start. Get kids on board early...
Ten bucks A DAY?
This user fee is a tool for what, exactly? Seems more like a massive obstacle to getting people out and enjoying parks.
Good discussion here. The real problem? People are a$$holes. Look at the havoc done to Joshua Tree recently. Freakin' Joshua Tree! Why not just go into Muir Woods with a chainsaw! A$$holes.
I am all for getting out in nature. But FSMdamnit, show a little respect. Clean up your $hit. Sure alcohol is a factor, but it's not a license to leave a mess.
I don't know what the answer is. It would take an army of park rangers to patrol everywhere. User fees are one tool: our local state parks are $10/person/day, ouch. I think there are programs to get low-income kids out there too, maybe that's where you start. Get kids on board early... c.
That is the problem with 'open access' for the public in general, in particular automobile access to public lands. If there are few users, self-enforcing social conventions and norms usually keep folks behaving well.
Alcohol is always a complicating factor. Here in 4X4 accessible areas of the interior of British Columbia, I have to assume that when one finds massive, ugly, garbage-filled fire pits and fire-scorched elderly Ponderosa pines that the 4X4 partiers were mostly drunk.
It should come as no surprise that one of the biggest dangers posed by greenfield resource projects (mining, oil&gas, etc.) results from giving road access to the public. The companies work hard to minimize their ecological footprint because that is what is expected in an Environmental Impact Study/Assessment (EIS/EIA) that is required by regulators. Then special interest groups representing the quote unquote 'public interest' lobby hard to have full, unfettered access to the new road or roads poking back into the wilderness. And the havoc begins......
It is too bad that 'freedom' in North America is tightly associated with open-access, Tragedy of the Commons -type outcomes and yet the ideologues persist. It is too bad that open access traditions are celebrated by those who glorify the ethnic-cleansing history of USA nation building.
One solution for off-road areas would be for enthusiasts, e.g., 4X4 off-road clubs, to co-manage the area with public agencies (state and/or federal), charge use fees, take down names, drivers licenses, etc., and intensively manage the area fining and or/permanently expelling those who shun the rules. This works like a charm for high-demand Atlantic salmon and sea-run charr recreational fisheries in Quebec. In Quebec, locals and Aboriginals benefit from sport fishing as opposed to finding themselves in a constant zero-sum game with 'sporties'.
It might not work so well for popular off-road areas as the use may not be sufficiently high to justify the costs of intensive management.
Perhaps in that case, hard-core enthusiasts can establish close links with state and federal conservation officers and police reporting directly to authorities through satellite phones or whatever it takes.
Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Apr 12, 2019 - 9:36am
westslope wrote:
I could post pictures of jacked up Nissan Xterra's rock crawling and mud bogging but frankly, it is not my thing. though I am grateful when the hard-core share their knowledge.
Kurt: My only concern is that 4 wheelers stick to the road/path and avoid driving all over the country side.
I know that the serious folks are pretty good about this. Others? Not so much. ATVs are worse. They go all over the damn place and create all kinds of damage.
Well I've been off- roading for over 45 years. What you say has some validity. Off -roading is pretty much band in the area where I live now. It's funny... but you can get fined for driving on a vacant lot. Back in the late 60's/ early 70's around here, pretty much everything was open. We had open desert where "squatters" in the 40âs and 50âs built little houses everywhere in the "sand dunes". Then they left them. We used to go âsand sleddingâ out in those areas. (Pull an old VW hood behind our 4 wheeler's with people on it) Cheap fun entertainment! There was a huge sand dune complex just outside the nearby city of Palm Desert. Where people from Los Angeles would come out on the weekend and would have fun. These sand dunes were even featured in the Time/ Life series of books one titled âThe Desertsâ. There was another really popular area just outside Palm Springs called Windy Point. One of my favorite areas, known as Indio Hills, which is just a short distance from my house.
All those areas were shutdown in the late 70âs. One of the reasoningâs behind it was for the âendangeredâ fringed toed lizard. All well and good⦠except within 5 years that area in Palm Desert was sold and developed into an âindustrial/ office areaâ. A bad thing right? Well the developers just had to pay the local conservation concerns a fee to put in land across the valley for a âPreserveâ. I guess the lizards could take a shuttle the 15 miles to their reservation. All those other areas the same thing happened. âPay us the money for our cause! Weâll line our pockets for the cause! Thank you for your contribution for saving the desert!â Yep. No one was making money on those people having a little fun. Shut it down! Meanwhile the open areas that are left are becoming way too overcrowded.
Glamis is a very popular sand dune area to the east of us. The environmentalist shut down a decent sized chunk of that area. They wanted to protect a plant. That place is a zoo with way too many people packed into a smaller area. I donât even go there anymore because of that. In Pismo Beach, 2/3 of the beach was shutdown back in the 80âs because of the Snowy Plover bird. In the summer that place has become a zoo also with too many people crammed into a small area. To me this is the bigger problem. People need to âget outâ. But when âgetting outâ is moving a city out to âout thereâ, youâre going to create more problems. Then the environmentalist will have more reasons to close it all down.
Your right⦠there will always be idiots out there. It usually involves drinking. Iâve seen them and always tried to tell them âFor crying out loud! Youâre going to ruin it for everybody else! Stop it!â The 4 Wheel Drive club I was in for years promoted the sensible use of off- roading. When you off âroad, you donât try to run over trees and bushes. Common sense tells you âDonât hit that. You might break something!â The only time you can safely venture off a trail is in the sand. If thereâs a bush or a tree⦠of course one needs to avoid it. Most times thereâs a rock hidden in there too!
The sweeping Wilderness laws passed here in California caused a huge shutting down of vast swaths of land. My son, granddaughter and myself went on a short overnight camping trip last spring. We entered into the edge of the âOrocopia Wilderness Areaâ. This âWilderness Areaâ was one of those recent âset aside areasâ. A series of high-tension power lines runs through it. And we were 2.5 miles off of Interstate 10. We also had better cell phone reception than I get at my house. We drove up a sand wash. Had dinner and sleep in the beds of our trucks.
Iâm all for protecting things like the Snowy Plover⦠and sure there are areas that need the âWilderness Protectionâ from clowns who donât care about anything but themselves. But when itâs taken too far⦠itâs not good for either side.
I could post pictures of jacked up Nissan Xterra's rock crawling and mud bogging but frankly, it is not my thing. though I am grateful when the hard-core share their knowledge.
Kurt: My only concern is that 4 wheelers stick to the road/path and avoid driving all over the country side.
I know that the serious folks are pretty good about this. Others? Not so much. ATVs are worse. They go all over the damn place and create all kinds of damage.
Hence my license plate frame. I "Jeep" my truck. I dare go places where most vehicles get hung up, stuck or roll it.
I did this in 2 Wheel Drive... I'm with you on those guys in their lifted trucks and Formula 1 tires on 20" wheels. I dare those guys to take it beyond the pavement.
I don't have a dog in this fight but people seem to like them here.
What the... did they carve that gap specifically for that event?
I think that is just erosion from use. IIRC, that was the only route up to the northern tip of Australia for a long time. You can get past another way now, but it's apparently good for bragging rights. About 400 km of 4-wheel track to the top of Cape York. It's littered with the vehicle carcasses of those who made errors in judgement.
Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Apr 10, 2019 - 6:34pm
westslope wrote:
Gee, I must be mistaken.
I am a park and self-propel person meself. I don't even have AT tires, just 4-season M&S.
Mind you, I discovered with the '93 Nissan Pathfinder we previously owned that I could go where a lot of larger trucks could not go due to the shorter wheel base, lower height and possibly better driving skills.
When the 4X4 was a FWD Nissan Sentra wagon from the 1980s, I would go flying by lifted 4X4 trucks and so-called off-road SUVs stuck during snow falls on the Coquihalla highway. It was fun to wave good-bye from the 1.6 litre, 4-banger 'ricer'.
Hence my license plate frame. I "Jeep" my truck. I dare go places where most vehicles get hung up, stuck or roll it.
I did this in 2 Wheel Drive... I'm with you on those guys in their lifted trucks and Formula 1 tires on 20" wheels. I dare those guys to take it beyond the pavement.
Driving the kids to school yesterday morning, I heard some punk kid behind us as we pulled up at a stop sign, sounded like he was skidding in the gravel. That irritation was short lived, as I pulled away from the stop, the sound started again. The ABS light on the dash came on, so I figured something awry with the brakes (I'm smart like that) so I dropped the kids off, drove 30 miles to work and dropped the truck off at the garage... $560 later, new front wheel bearings (installed as some sort of un-serviceable cassette nowadays, can't even lube them), and the thing is rolling like a dream. When the bearing went out, it destroyed the ABS sensor and that's part of the new cassette so I actually didn't have to pay/fix anything brake related.
Of course there was a sharp intake of breath at the surprise expense but I youtubed the repair and watched 10 minutes of one where the guy says "they claim it's a 2-hour job and charge hundreds for it but I'm going to show you how they rip you off" then he proceeded to spend a 20 minute video, a lot of it on time lapse and a lot of edits, pounding and whanging and using $10,000 worth of tools and yeah if I had the tools I could have done it but not in my driveway and not in a day. I think he probably spent over an hour on the one wheel. So all in all, I think my front end's probably good for a few more years and I'm okay with the price I paid.
The alternator's giving out, tho. I'll probably wait until it's warmer and do that one myself. And wish I'd paid a guy. But I think I can get that done in an hour. We'll see.
Yeah... sometimes it's best to put the white flag up. I consider myself a pretty decent mechanic... when it comes to my truck, I'd say way better than anybody that can work on it. When it comes to front wheel drive cars I'll do the basic remove/ replace items. Beyond that I'll fly the white flag most times. You've got to weigh the cost of your time vs. money spent to get it done by someone who should know what they're doing.
Anything tranverse-mounted is a PITA. This weekend the harmonic balancer/damper on the Acura MDX went out. Rim stripped clean off the hub. Fortunately we were still in the neighborhood. Got a pull back to the house from a mechanic neighbor. Ordered the parts from the local Oreilly's for next day delivery, rented the special tool (free if you bring it back). Watched a couple vids about it.
Well, the bolt on the harmonic balancer is a beast. Scoffs at breaker bars. Impact wrenches don't budge it. Finally heated it with a MAPP torch, twice. And put a six-foot pipe over the breaker bar. Dang thing finally gave it up. Replacement is fairly straightforward. Getting the belt routed is a challenge, it's not intuitive and the belt wants to go anywhere but on the pulleys. $200 in parts and a full work day lost, but it's finished and works fine.
I might consider installing a fluid-filled damper one on the next ride. $$$, but actively damps engine vibration. Some people see better performance and mileage too. c.
