September 07, 2004

Superintendent
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
47050 Generals Highway
Three Rivers, CA 93271-9700

Dear Superintendent:

I am writing to ask you to please do something to stop the unruly behavior that has been allowed to exist in the campgrounds in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks.

I stayed at Dorst Campground in Sequoia National Park September 3-6, 2004. It is a lovely campground with spacious camp sites with plenty of privacy, clean well kept bathrooms, and a well organized reservation system. However, on Friday night some boys staying in the campground stayed up well into the night screaming. Many of the other campers asked them to please keep it down but this only provoked more screaming. I am not exaggerating when I say screaming either. It was very obnoxious and upsetting to everyone camping there. In the morning I complained to a ranger and he laughed in my face. I went to the Kiosk and I just so happened to run into two campers who were unfortunate enough to be right next door to these hoodlums. We were told to call 911 if it happened again. The following night, Saturday night, we arrived back at our camp site after a day of hiking looking forward to a night of silence and star gazing. But that night some campers decided it would be a good idea to play their boom box until exactly 10:00 PM. Why do I have to wait until 10:00 PM for the thumping bass of a boom box to stop? This is not acceptable. This behavior should not be allowed to take place in a national park. I bet it is safe to say that most park visitors would agree with me when I say that is not the experience most people are looking for when they visit a national park. I believe it is incumbent upon you as superintendent to do something to stop the behavior before it starts. I have some suggestions.

Everywhere you go in Sequoia National Park there are multiple signs warning about bears. It's on the bear proof boxes, on a pink piece of paper you are given when you check into the campground, it's on the campground information and regulations, it's on the signs at the trail heads, and it's in the park newspaper. However, the only reference I could find to the importance of solitude and respect for other campers was a tiny reference on the Dorst Campground Information and Regulations. No ranger admonishes you upon your arrival to respect other visitors or to be quiet or to leave the boom box at home. My first suggestion is that instead of inundating visitors with all the information about bears you should be warning of the danger of causing other visitors to not have a good time by being noisy, unruly, rambunctious, and impolite. The Dorst Campground Information and Regulations should have in bold print: NO BOOM BOXES ALLOWED. QUIET HOURS 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM. VIOLATERS WILL BE PROSECUTED AND FINED $150. This should be reprinted on a pink piece of paper handed to all of those staying in a national park campground. Rangers should question the visitors whether they understand the rule and did they receive the notice about the importance of quiet hours. I also think that $20 a night is an awful lot to charge for a campground only to be harassed by other campers. Wouldn't it make more sense to charge $10 per person? That way it would discourage bands of revelers from staying there.

On a completely different note I would like to also point out to you that I do not approve of the new sign you placed at the General Grant Tree. It has a grammatical error. It says the following: "If the Grant Tree was a tank of gas on a car…." Sorry but the General Grant Tree is not a tank of gas. Therefore, the sentence is contrary to fact. Contrary to fact sentences as you must know from grammar school require the subjunctive. Thus the sentence should read: "If the General Grant Tree were a tank of gas…." Moreover, the sentence is uninteresting and not thought provoking and should not even be on the sign to begin with. The other problem with the sign is that for the ten years I have been visiting the park, park literature has claimed the age of the tree to be 2700 years and now all of a sudden it is only 1700 years old. How did that happen? It would have been far more interesting for the sign to explain that than to bring up cars which are the bane of Sequoia National Park and the primary cause of ozone depletion and poor visibility in the park. Please get rid of the sign. Bring back the old sign. Why are you talking about cars in a sign about that majestic tree?

There is one other small item I would like to bring to your attention. This is not the first time I have visited a national park and run into someone walking their dog on a park trail. On Monday, we were walking around Crescent Meadow and some people were walking their dog. Again instead of repeating over and over ad nauseum about not feeding bears why don't you do more to educate the public about leaving pets at home and their incompatibility with the wilderness experience? I know for a fact that pets are not allowed on any park trail but I have reminded visitors of this in the past and been challenged. I didn't say anything to the people at Crescent Meadow because I knew they would either say they didn't know or say it was legal. I noticed that there was no sign posted at the Crescent Meadow parking lot about pets not being allowed. It should be obvious but it's not. So just like all the reminders about the bears, park visitors need to be reminded to not bring pets on park trails, not bring boom boxes to the park, and not be noisy at night.

In conclusion, I hope you will take my suggestions seriously and do something to better inform visitors of the importance of quiet hours and to make the visit to Sequoia National Park a good memory instead of a bad one. Given the close proximity of Sequoia National Park to a major urban area, I think a little more needs to be done to keep a visit there a wilderness experience and not an urban experience.

Sincerely,

Michelle Brodie