Dear National Park Service, Let me begin by wishing you a happy belated birthday! One hundred years is no joke! You’re in good company with other centarians Speedo, the Panama Canal, and Merrill Lynch. Surviving, let alone growing and thriving, over the course of ten decades is no easy task. Congratulations and Godspeed. NPS, I sent your present last summer and for the first time ever bought an annual, America the Beautiful Park Pass. The pass paid for itself a few time

Jen and I are the unlikeliest of pairs, but being roommates at Clarkson, we found a common love of the outdoors and in the heart of the Adirondacks on some twenty mile hike or another, our friendship was cemented. I invited Jen on an adventure for a multitude of reasons, the least of which frankly is, despite how much of a worker bee she may be, she can easily be swayed into abandoning work for time outdoors- my kinda girl! Probably more importantly though, despite our diff