I was at the Fairfield in Provo, sitting at one of those tables in the free breakfast area when I overheard a couple talking about the federal government shutting down the national parks. I hadn’t been following the news, just working on getting my son to the MTC, so I didn’t really know what they were talking about. But it was easy to find out, just a search on my iphone gave me the details.
“Kind of a bummer,” I thought. I wanted to drive through Zion’s National Park on the way to southern California. We dropped Seth at the Provo MTC, said our goodbyes to him and my other son and daughter-in-law going to school at BYU, and then headed south. We drove almost all the way to St. George and found a Holiday Inn Express to stay overnight. In the elevator, a woman from Boston asked us, “Are you going to the national parks? You can drive through, it’s totally worth it.”
“I read that you can’t pull over and take pictures,” I said.
“No, people were pulling over, you can’t park and hike is all.”
So we headed to Zion’s National Park the next morning. The roads were not crowded. The road is open because it goes through the park to the other side where there are towns.
“This is a plus.”
As we pulled up to the entrance, the old man in the little hut grumbled, “You know about the government shut down?” And handed as a slip of paper explaining the situation.
This was not bad news — we did not have to pay the $25 entrance fee!
“Wow, super, this is great,” and we drove through the park, took pictures and noticed the brave Americans who moved the cones in the pull-out areas, got out and took photos. Yep, it seems to work fine when the government shuts down. Saved me money too. I also learned from the lady in the elevator that you can visit Grand Canyon on the side owned by the Native Americans — yea, the government can’t tell them to close down.
