I appear to have reached the age when an individual increasingly ceaselessly says, “I bear in mind the great outdated days earlier than (fill within the clean) made issues worse.” After all, I can think about a 25-year-old saying, “I bear in mind the great outdated days earlier than the Supreme Court docket took us again to the Darkish Ages,” so perhaps it’s not a matter of age.
Anyway, I bear in mind the great outdated days when, on the spur of the second, my mother and pa would pack me and my sister into the station wagon and we’d drive all the way down to Mount Rainier for a stroll among the many wildflowers and as much as the Ice Caves. (Keep in mind these? They melted away just a few years in the past; one other good outdated days factor.) Not solely did we not want reservations, there have been no site visitors jams on the park entrance.
Not so, anymore. This summer time, people seeking to enter the park between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. need a reservation. After 3 p.m., getting in is a matter of sitting in a line of vehicles that may lengthen two or three miles again from the doorway gate.
A few weekends in the past, some good associates of mine went tenting at Rainier. That they had correctly obtained their timed entry and simply rolled into the park and on to their campsite. Then, they found they had been wanting propane and the solely place to purchase extra was at a store outdoors the park perimeter. They zipped all the way down to get the propane with out noticing the time. Coming back from this deceptively brief journey round 3 p.m., my associates obtained caught within the lineup of parents with out reservations. It was one other three hours earlier than they obtained again to camp.
Yikes.
Like I mentioned, I bear in mind the great outdated days.
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