The National Park Service turns 100 on August 25, 2016. As a part of NPS’s anniversary celebration, admission fees will be waived at parks across the country from August 25 to 28. Other admission-free dates in 2016 include September 24 (National Public Lands Day), and November 11 (Veterans Day).
America the beautiful, live-streamed
Lauren Katz is a senior project manager at Vox, focusing on newsroom-wide editorial initiatives as well as podcast engagement strategy.
In case you need further inspiration to get outside, the NPS shared a list of ways to #FindYourPark in 2015, which includes apt advice to “take a sunrise selfie.”
President Barack Obama has been a big supporter of the NPS during his time in office, including launching the Every Kid in a Park initiative in February 2015, a program that gave fourth-graders and their families free admission to national parks and other federal land for the entire year. Most recently, Obama created three new national monuments protecting roughly 704,000 acres of land, according to the Washington Post.
If you can't make it out to a national park soon, the internet is here to help. The prediction schedule for Old Faithful, one of Yellowstone National Park's most popular attractions, is published online with the season opening of the Canyon Visitor Education Center. You can view a live stream of Old Faithful, which erupts every 35 to 120 minutes, from your desk.
A screenshot from the Old Faithful live stream. (NPS)
The Old Faithful live-streaming webcam, launched in January 2008, is viewed by more than 2 million people annually, according to the park's deputy chief of interpretive planning and media development, Tami Blackford. Old Faithful is not the largest or the most regularly scheduled geyser in the park, but it likely owes its popularity to the fact that it's the most frequent geyser of its size at Yellowstone.
Last year, the national park system received a total of 292,800,082 visitors to more than 84 million acres of land. Not everyone has the chance to visit these beautiful spots throughout the country and beyond (there are also national parks in American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands).
Luckily, Old Faithful isn't the only landmark you can see virtually. Denali National Park has a live stream of sled dog puppies. The Yosemite Conservancy has a live stream of Yosemite Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls in North America. Explore.org hosts a live stream of brown bears at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. The Statue of Liberty has a camera — the torch cam — sponsored by the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation.
Screenshot of Yosemite Falls live stream. (Yosemite Conservancy)
The National Park Service also sets up static webcams to monitor the air quality in various locations. While these images aren’t quite as exciting as live streams, the regularly updated photos offer a feel for the general landscape and weather conditions. Some of the best spots include:
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