Windy Tops

Tag: usa

  • A little about fundamental legal access to conservation land

    I have to mention just how glad I am that New Zealand parks aren’t subject to the same kind of bureaucratic mess that seems to have been occurring with National Parks throughout the USA over the past few days. In short, the US Congress has been having trouble reaching agreement on the budget, meaning the Federal Government may have needed to shut down for lack of funding. Among many other things, this suddenly put the immediate future of 394 National Parks throughout the USA is in doubt, along with all employees, the businesses and surrounding communities that relied on them. Thankfully this bureaucratic mess has been averted with an emergency budget now having been passed, but it wouldn’t have been unprecedented for such a shutdown to go ahead. Similar shutdowns occurred in 1995 and 1996.

    The USA’s a big place, and I imagine the real consequences vary from state to state, but I’m fairly sure that for fundamental legal reasons (detailed below), this kind of park closure crisis couldn’t easily happen in New Zealand at all.

    Some local examples of the USA’s National Park problems include:
    (more…)

  • Final thoughts

    Travelling is a really fascinating thing, but something that gets me about it is that it’s a way to notice just how screwed up the world can really be. I’ve just come back from the USA where briefly I visited San Francisco, stayed 2 weeks in a hotel prison stuck behind a highway in New Jersey, and eventually escaped into the Manhatten metropolis of New York City for about a week at the end. This will probably be the last post I write about my recent trip, since I’d like to keep the focus of this blog on walking and tramping related topics.
    (more…)

  • How to be less insane

    Apoligies for the double negative. The work things have finished and I’ve met up with Shaun and Sarah. We’ve already been to DC for a couple of days, which I heartily recommend — the Smithsonian Air and Space museum and the Spy Museum are both awesome. I won’t dwell on these in this post, however.

    After 2.5 weeks stuck in cities (or hotels), I finally had an opportunity to get out and go for a walk. This is good, because being stuck in hotels and in the city has been driving me insane. The only problem is that I don’t know exactly where I went. Shaun suggested the Blue Mountain Twin Summits Trail, which is part of Blue Mountain Reservation. I caught a Metro North train from New York up to a town called Peekskill, on the edge of the Hudson River. From the local railway station at Peekskill, it’s a roughly 1.609344 km walk to the entrance of Blue Range Reservation at the end of Lounsbury Lane.
    (more…)

  • A world of small differences

    This isn’t a trampey-related post, but I thought I’d write an update about what’s going on. In short, I made it to the USA without any incidents.

    After an overnight stop in San Francisco, we flew into JFK in New York last Saturday (Sunday NZ time), and were taxi’d to our hotel in New Jersey, which is the main base for a couple of weeks while we do some work-related things with a company that’s 5 minutes down the road. And I use that phrase loosely, because as with everything here, it’s a 5 minute drive. It’s actually very frustrating, because although the hotel is quite nice there is nothing nearby. It’s an island in the middle of a freeway, and it’s impossible to get anywhere without driving, which is a a problem when there’s no car. Even food is a problem, because the hotel doesn’t have any proper restaurant — they just expect people to have cars.
    (more…)

  • Outdoors in New York

    I was all set up to enjoy a nice trip to the Kahurangis over Wellington Anniversary Weekend, which is this coming weekend. The bad news is that I had to pull out, which I’m quite saddened about because I haven’t yet seen the Kahurangis up close, and I was really looking forward to it. The good news, however, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that the reason I pulled out is because the following weekend, work’s sending me on a 3 week trip to New York. We’re getting diplomatic passports sorted and it’s quite exciting.

    It’s actually only 2 weeks of work, and that part is really over the border in New Jersey. I’m tagging an extra week to the end to take a look around New York during which I hope to be accommodating myself on the floor of a friend’s apartment. I suspect the time of year is very against me and so far I’m not planning to take a lot of outdoors gear with me. If anyone can suggest some interesting walks or outdoor things to see that might be conveniently accessible in the region during the early to middle part of the winter month of February, though, I’d be interested to hear about them.