Zero Waste Camping on the National Park to Park Highway

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Zero waste camping
 
On our weekly Go Green litter pick up hike.

Zero Waste

I’ve been interested in Zero Waste living for a while. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Zero Waste is a movement of drastically reducing the amount of trash you generate through composting, recycling, reusing as much as possible and making more package free purchasing choices. Basically it’s being aware and taking action to reduce the amount of garbage in your life.

After reading the book Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste by Bea Johnson, I made several changes in our daily life to reduce the amount of trash we generate. I now bring reusable produce and grocery bags to the grocery store, shop in the bulk section and cloth diaper Baby L. But camping? That’s a whole different beast.

Think of your last camp out. Paper plates, propane containers, plastic water bottles – all that rubbish has to go somewhere. Yes single use items are super convenient, but once they’re used the remains are shipped away to rot in a landfill, and in the case of plastic items they’ll stay there long after we’re gone.

Mountain Dad and Baby L picking up garbage on our local trail.

Think of how much trash you generated then multiply that by the 300 million – the number of visitors the National Park Service had last year. In Grand Teton National Park alone 1800 TONS of garbage is generated every season.

Subaru’s National Park Zero Landfill Initiative

As a sponsor for the 100 anniversary of the National Park Service and an industry leader in Zero Waste practices, Subaru has partnered with Grand Teton, Denali and Yosemite National Parks to reduce their garbage footprint. These three parks are part of a pilot program aimed to curb the amount of trash visitors produce in the parks each year.

This video from the Subaru website was really interesting:

Grand Teton National Park is the first stop on our National Park to Park Highway Route. That means the pressure is on. Will we be able to live a Zero Landfill lifestyle for seven weeks while driving more than 5,000 miles?

Nope. But that doesn’t mean we won’t try.

What’ll make our Grand Teton visit easier is staying with our trip sponsor at Togwotee Mountain Lodge. Their cabins have mini kitchettes, meaning preparing food will be as easy as it would be at home. Plus access to laundry facilities and flush toilets will make cloth diapering so much easier. That may be more than you want to know, but we’re doing everything we can to reduce the amount of trash we use. What about you?

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Stage 1: National Park to Park Highway Tour

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This summer 2016 we’re taking a seven week road trip to tour the National Park to Park Highway. But before we even get there we wanted to make sure we could do it. So we’ve divided our National Park to Park Highway Tour into two parts. Part one will be a one week tour of Utah starting May 30, 2016. 

George A. Grant, Photographer (NARA record: 1226390– U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Zion National Park
Zion National Park was part of the original National Park to Park Highway. The 1920 road followed the Arrowhead Trail from southern California into Utah. Unfortunately the 1920 Auto Tour group never made it to Zion National Park because of poor road conditions.


We wanted to visit because not only was Zion National Park the only National Park in Utah in 1920, it’s a beautiful place! We’ve visited before and especially enjoyed biking the Pa’rus Trail, Riverside Walk and swimming in our secret swim spot on the Virgin River.

In addition to Zion National Park we’ll be visiting Bryce Canyon National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument on stage one of our National Park to Park Highway Tour. Although Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks weren’t part of the National Park to Park Highway, they still have an interesting history.


Utah Parks Company
In 1923 the Union Pacific Railroad formed a subsidiary, The Utah Parks Company, in order to promote tourist travel to Zion, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks National Monuments. The railroad built a spur line from Lund to Cedar City, Utah and from there employed white touring buses to take tourists to these remote locations. 

Image from desertpearl.com/en/story/history

The Utah Parks Company built lodges and cabins in Zion National Park, the then Bryce Canyon National Monument and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in the 1920s. Their financial investment in the parks was substantial. Some sources report the Utah Parks Company discriminated against private automobile travel to these parks because of the large stake they held there. Luckily that is not an issue today. With the popularization of automobile travel and improved roads now more people than ever can visit these uniquely beautiful places.


Our Utah Parks Company Tour
Visiting Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument seemed like the perfect “dry run”  camping trip to test our sage brushing (1920s term for car camping) skills. Although this tour technically came after the 1920 National Park to Park Highway tour, it included some major sites that we did not want to miss on our adventure.

On May 30th we’ll set off with our Woom Bikes and Burley Bike Trailer for some biking on Zion National Park’s Pa’rus trail. We’ll be hiking Navajo Trail and Queen’s Loop in Bryce National Park and enjoying a Star Party at Cedar Breaks National Monument. And we’ll be letting you know how it goes every step of the way.

We’d love to have you along for the ride on our National Park to Park Highway Tour. We want your input on what adventures we should include. Do you have a favorite hike or bike ride in one of the National Parks on our route? What adventures do you recommend? Leave a comment or contact me on instagramtwitter or facebook. We’d love to hear from you!

 

What IS the National Park to Park Highway?

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National Park-to-Park Highway

 

Last week we announced our biggest adventure yet. A seven week, 5,600 mile auto tour of the National Park to Park Highway. You may be wondering the same thing everyone I’ve talked to does:

What exactly IS the National Park to Park Highway?

National Park-to-Park Highway
Image from Paving the Way: The National Park-to-Park Highway

History

In 1920 there wasn’t good road access to the National Parks of the West. The primary transportation in and out of National Parks was the railroad or roads designed for use by horse and wagon, not the increasingly popular automobile.

A group of intrepid travelers wanted to change that. With the help of AG Westgard, route finder for AAA, and Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, the National Park to Park Highway Tour was born.

The Playground Trail

National Parks were known as The Nation’s Playgrounds in those early days, and this book by Lee and Jane Whiteley is the best resource I’ve found about it. It’s a wealth of information with authentic maps and photographs, plus directions on driving the tour today.
 
One thing I learned from The Playground Trail: The National Park-to-Park Highway was that roads in the 1920s were named and maintained by private groups, usually auto clubs. Nowadays we take for granted that some government agency maintains our roads, but at that time private groups provided signs, maps and maintenance of their adopted route.

 

 

Although many auto trails existed, nothing connected all of the National Parks of the west. The National Park to Park Highway association banded together to fix this.

Paving the Way National Park-to-Park Highway documentary
View on Amazon.com

Paving The Way
The PBS Documentary Paving the Way: The National Park to Park Highway directed by Brandon Wade is another invaluable resource. It chronicles the efforts of the dedicatory tour that left Denver on August 27, 1920.

Twenty vehicles joined the 5,600 mile caravan on The Longest Auto Highway in the World. Along the way they advocated for paved, well-maintained roads to connect the National Parks.
 
Their 76 day schedule is truly amazing considering how slow and difficult car travel was compared to nowadays.

 

If you have any interest in early National Parks or good historical story telling I highly recommend watching Paving the Way: The National Park-to-Park Highway.

 

See America First

You can learn all you want from books and movies, but at some point you have to be in a place to truly experience it. That’s why I’m taking my mountain family on a tour of the twelve Parks on National Park to Park Highway, plus six more National Parks and Monuments along the way.

Since 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service it’s the perfect time to celebrate these outdoor spaces. This summer we hope you can #FindYourPark along with us as we take the advice of the 1920s National Park advertisements and See America First. We’re taking off in late June 2016 and would love for you to come along.

To see all of our National Park-to-Park Highway posts click here.

Mountains to Ocean

OCTOBER 2018 UPDATE: See the awesome sights of the National Park-to-Park Highway and our family’s journey in this FREE photo ebook. Just put in your email in the box right here and we’ll send it right to your inbox:

We are currently on a year-long, full-time RV road trip around North America and would love for you to join us via email.

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