Hacker News Reader

Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

I think you're right that there needs to be actual competition between park services, but I am doubtful it will make that much of a difference. The public appetite for attendance absolutely dwarfs the capacity of the park. To meet demand you'd have to build a whole city.

I've given up on Yosemite. There are lots of other places to go in California (and beyond). Although they are starting to get crowded too...

View on HN

You may be right, but even if the concessioners aren’t great, the valley can still be a wonderful, quiet, peaceful place to be. Especially in late spring when the dogwoods are in full bloom, the waterfalls are full, and the summer crowds haven’t arrived yet. After Labor Day is also nice. Summer crowds aren’t fun, but I do feel like there is another way of looking at it: so many people going outside and enjoying nature instead of looking at the world through their phones. There was a time pre-Covid when attendance and interest in national parks and state parks was kind of on the wane, and it’s nice that so many people want to come and enjoy these places.

How much of the demand is domestic I wonder? When I’ve been to places like this there seems to be a lot of international tourists.

Roughly a quarter are international.

I know I'm just some random guy and I'm hardly representative of the average American vacationer, but I tend to visit national and state parks on family road trips. There's a lot of amazing places in our country and I'm always talking to travelers about what they've seen.

Sure, I see a lot of foreign visitors, but I see a lot more domestic ones. I figure their money's just as good as mine, and it'd hardly be fair to complain about them after I've done the tourist thing in Japan, Spain, and Gibraltar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com