State Parks

As Valley-area campers have discovered this summer, the one thing that is more difficult than getting reservations at a state campground is getting through to the company that takes the reservations over the phone. "It's almost impossible," Carol Hayward of Van Nuys said. "The line was busy all the time. I must have made more than 50 calls before I finally got through. It was very frustrating and maddening."

When producers of the upcoming science fiction movie "After Earth" wanted to create an image of what the planet might look like 1,000 years in the future, location manager Dow Griffith knew just the place. He immediately thought of the mystical redwood forests in Northern California where his parents had taken him on a camping trip as a child. "I wanted to be able to evoke that sense of what the Earth would be like a thousand years after man has left, and I always felt that these enormous trees would say that in one shot," Griffith said in an interview from his Santa Monica home.

Ken Burns makes amazing documentaries, but even more amazing is that the Oct. 15 fluff piece on national parks by Burns and Dayton Duncan, "Preserving national treasures," made it to print in The Times. The article can be summed up as such: National parks are wonderful, and thank you President Obama for saying that. Unfortunately, there's no meat, no proposals, just nostalgia. But "where's the beef" when our antiquated parks could use a real makeover? Burns and Duncan rightly pay homage to Yosemite, "the home of spectacular waterfalls, silent groves of ancient trees and an unequaled alpine wilderness.

GOBLIN VALLEY, Utah - "The goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!" wrote poet James Whitcomb Riley in 1885, probably just about the time that cowboys searching for cattle in southern Utah stumbled into this extraordinary collection of sandstone formations that eerily resemble goblins. The goblins may not have gotten the cowboys, but they have been drawing visitors ever since. The area was called Mushroom Valley in the 1920s by Arthur Chaffin, who operated a ferry across the Colorado River and was looking for alternative routes when he and two companions arrived at a vantage point and saw before them a valley of strangely shaped rock formations.

Re "State urged to give up some parks," March 26 The public and its elected and appointed representatives should be very cautious about relinquishing control or ownership of California's state parks to other groups or agencies, as recommended by a government oversight group. The parks are part of our common heritage; they belong to the people. What guarantees are there that cities, counties, regional agencies or other organizations can manage the state parks better? Maybe with renewed attention and interest from the governor and others, the state itself can do a better job. Daniel Fink Beverly Hills Until the California Department of Parks and Recreation ceases to be primarily a law enforcement agency, no real change can occur.

If you didn't buy an annual California state parks pass yet, prepare to shell out a bit more. The new price of $195 - a $70 leap - goes into effect today (Tuesday). The California Department of Parks and Recreation hopes to generate $1 million to $1.5 million by raising the prices of state park passes, according to a statement. The popular Vehicle Day Use Annual Pass that allows access to all 279 state parks for a year jumps from $125 to $195; the Golden Poppy Vehicle Day Use Pass good at selected parks for a year increases from $90 to $125, and the Boat Use Pass (Sticker)

Care for a Coke with that tree? In the absence of revenue and the political will to keep all of California's 278 state parks open, 70 are scheduled to close. Cutbacks in maintenance and basic services should be expected at most of the rest. One partial solution, according to the Department of Parks and Recreation, is to allow some corporate logos in the parks as well as limited private management agreements. And though these options might conjure up a mountain range's worth of slippery slopes, they're better than the alternative.

The California state parks system is pretty clueless about parking -- which, strange to say, is kind of an important issue for it these days because it's how we pay to get in and how it gets a lot of its money. Much of the time, at many of the parks, there's no one around to collect parking fees and no iron ranger for visitors to pay. At the same time, the fees for entering the most popular of the parks have reached the stage -- $10 to $15 a day -- at which repeat visits get a little painful to the wallet.

Campers were evacuated from park campgrounds from Ventura to Crescent City early Friday in response to the tsunami warning for the California coast triggered by the Japanese earthquake. Beaches in Los Angeles and Orange counties also were closed. The California Department of Parks and Recreation issued a statement about the closures. Near Crescent City , where 8-foot waves battered the city's harbor, campgrounds at Usal and Bear Harbor in the Sinkyone Wilderness area were evacuated and closed.

More than a dozen California state parks that have been a rich source of filming for such classic Hollywood movies as "High Noon," George Lucas' "Star Wars" sequel "Return of the Jedi" and Steven Spielberg's "Back to the Future III" are in danger of going dark. They are among 70 state parks, historic sites and recreation areas — or 25% of the 278 parks statewide — that Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed closing in response to the state's budget crisis. The planned closings, which are part of the $33 million in park cuts approved by the Legislature this year, are likely to be the subject of intense upcoming budget negotiations in Sacramento.

Campgrounds and trails remain closed at Point Mugu State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains after the Springs fire last week cut a blazing path from Newbury Park to Pacific Coast Highway. The 28,000-acre wildfire is expected to be fully contained as soon as Tuesday afternoon. Popular campgrounds at Sycamore Cove and Thornhill Broome Beach, accessed by Pacific Coast Highway, are to be closed until later in May, officials said. ReserveAmerica , the service that handles campground reservations, has been informing campers who had booked sites about the closure and refunding their money.

The California state parks system is pretty clueless about parking -- which, strange to say, is kind of an important issue for it these days because it's how we pay to get in and how it gets a lot of its money. Much of the time, at many of the parks, there's no one around to collect parking fees and no iron ranger for visitors to pay. At the same time, the fees for entering the most popular of the parks have reached the stage -- $10 to $15 a day -- at which repeat visits get a little painful to the wallet.

Re "State urged to give up some parks," March 26 The public and its elected and appointed representatives should be very cautious about relinquishing control or ownership of California's state parks to other groups or agencies, as recommended by a government oversight group. The parks are part of our common heritage; they belong to the people. What guarantees are there that cities, counties, regional agencies or other organizations can manage the state parks better? Maybe with renewed attention and interest from the governor and others, the state itself can do a better job. Daniel Fink Beverly Hills Until the California Department of Parks and Recreation ceases to be primarily a law enforcement agency, no real change can occur.

SACRAMENTO -- California's park system has been marred by management problems that run much deeper than an accounting scandal revealed last year, according to a new report released by a government oversight agency on Monday morning. The problems have resulted in an ossified parks department that needs to cede control of scores of natural and historic sites, the report says. If changes aren't made, parks will probably have to close. The study is the result of a yearlong examination by the nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission, which advises lawmakers on policy issues.

BORREGO SPRINGS, Calif. - Locals call it "The Miracle of March. " If spring rains and temperatures are just right, the forbidding mountains and parched badlands here are transformed into dazzling panoramas of wildflowers that draw thousands of tourists. The crowds provide a major boost to Borrego Springs, a community of about 3,500 permanent residents in the heart of 640,000-acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. When blossoms abound - every five to seven years or so - visitors spend freely on gasoline, groceries, souvenirs, sun hats and cold drinks as they seek directions to "flower hot spots.

Like a snippet of a hit song in one of their fast-moving disc jockey sets, the dance-music megastars of Swedish House Mafia are leaving us almost as soon as they arrived. The Stockholm trio — which started affecting Top 40 charts in 2010 with the Pharrell Williams collaboration "One" — will launch its so-called One Last Tour, a global trek scheduled to play the 35,000-capacity Los Angeles State Historic Park next March. You can understand the group's early retirement as a going-out-on-top maneuver.

Wrestling with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, Arizona decided Friday to close nearly all of its state parks, including the famed Tombstone Courthouse and Yuma Territorial Prison. The State Parks Board unanimously voted to close 13 parks by June 3. Eight others had already been closed, and the decision would leave nine open -- but only if the board can raise $3 million this year. The action represents the largest closure of state parks in the nation, although several other states are considering similar moves.

SACRAMENTO - Officials at the California attorney general's office have reversed course and begun a deeper examination of the accounting scandal at the state parks department that could result in criminal charges. The renewed probe was disclosed Wednesday during a legislative hearing on state parks. Previously, the attorney general's office had concurred with a decision by the Sacramento County district attorney not to pursue a criminal case, much to the chagrin of some lawmakers. During the hearing, state Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa)