Welcome to the Park Avenue Photo Friday diary and open thread. Each Friday, people are encouraged to join us in sharing their pictures of the national parks, state parks and other major parks and to vote on which park will be the subject of our next Things to Know Before You Come column of travel advice and tips on visiting the parks.
I'd like to start by thanking everyone for their interest in both of our Park Avenue series so far, the Things to Know Before You Come column and our weekly feature focusing on specific national parks, monuments and other NPS facilities.
Our Things to Know Before You Come column, looking at hints and tips for visiting a park you choose each week in this open thread (see poll below), is released each Tuesday at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT. Parks cover by our past columns are:
Help choose next week's column by voting below. Each week's runner-up will return to the poll the following week. Last week's runner-up was a tie between Grand Canyon and Rocky Mountain National Parks.
On Thursdays at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we release our weekly user contributed park feature. Our past features have been
- Jackson Hole National Monument
- Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine
- Capitol Reef National Park
- Petrified Forest National Park
- Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
- Dry Tortugas National Park
- Wind Cave National Park & Jewel Cave Natl Monument
Next week, we learn about Death Valley National Park in a feature by Ed in Montana. That will be followed by Musing85's look at Zion National Park. If you are interested in writing a feature about a park, please volunteer at out
sign up form and as your window approaches, you'll be contacted (about 3 weeks before) to finalize your date.
I'd like to gauge the interest of people here on starting a third series similar to our weekly national park feature except this series covering state, county and other major public parks. Because of my time constraints, I can't take on the duty of coordinating it myself, but if one of you would like to take on the task of arranging a weekly or biweekly feature on state parks, getting people to signup and facilitating the publishing of the diaries on a regular basis, please let me know and we'll get you set up to start that series as soon as you are ready.
Additionally, if any of you are interested in writing other pieces about the parks or park related topics (eg. the CCC, History of the National Park Service, Biographical sketches of park related people, the science behind a park or parks, a look at native American cultures whose ruins are protected as parks, etc) feel free to submit those features. Just ask for an invite as a contributor and we'll get you set up. I think it'd be nice if we branch out into more than just our two regular features.
And with that, on to pictures!
My theme for this week (but you certainly don't have to follow it in your own contributed pictures) is "A little birdie told me..."
A raven at the Grand Canyon
A green heron at Shark Valley in the Everglades
Great white heron in Biscayne National Park
A little barn swallow at Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons
A snowy egret perched in a tree in Everglades National Park