This story may be of interest to cavers who frequent National Forest. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,459225,00.html
The article indicates that fewer people are camping overnight when visiting the parks. I love camping. But most of my camping gear has been boxed up and stored in the garage for several years. I haven't used my North Face tent since the Alabama NSS Convention, 3 years ago. I think like thousands ( or possibly millions ) of other Americans, we bought a house slightly above our means, and are living a lifestyle way above our means. That certainly has something to do with the decrease in road-trips. Another factor, at least for us, is we joined the extra-urban lifestyle, meaning we are beyond the suburbs and have to commute sometimes an hour to places we need to go to. ( How much sense does that make ? ) For us, the traffic is so bad heading out of town, that it is discouraging to try to go anywhere on a Friday evening. We live in Fort Bend County, so we would have to cross the heavy traffic of 2 metropolitan counties in order to get road bound towards the National Forest of east Texas. And once there, we would find little scenery - only muggy weather and mosquitos. There used to be a small swimming hole at Ratcliff http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/texas/recreation/davy_crockett/ratcliff.shtml I haven't been there in 30 years or more, and it is the only place I can think of that I would want to go to in that neck of the woods. I just can't imagine suffering in the car for 5 hours with my family just to go to camping there. It would be much easier for me to hike about a mile behind my house and set up a tent in the woods there, but after 5 years of living here, I haven't even tried that. It is my opinion, that once the enormous plasma TV's become mainstream and more and more movies and games are created, that people are going to become even more home-bodies. At present, it would probably take a person a lifetime to watch the current selection of DVD's that are available - for example, every episode of "The Little Rascals." http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KKD2T6CJL._SS500_.jpg And kids today seem to watch the same episode over and over and over again like a bunch of zombies. David Locklear --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
