Driving long stretches of road alone in the car gets me thinking. In particular, I was thinking about the vast natural wonders the US in general and the Southwestern States (Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico) possess and how vast crowds come to see them. I am unsure if this is really because they are so uniquely spectacular (don’t get me wrong, they certainly are) when compared to other countries and continents or if it has also to do with the ease of traveling in the US and the many people speaking English. It seems that for Australians, New Zealanders, people from the British Isles and other English speaking countries naturally choose the US for their travels and discoveries.

This means that certain parks and natural monuments had to implement crowd control. This comprises the very well organized mandatory (Zion) or voluntary (Bryce Canyon, Yosemite etc.) free shuttle bus system to avoid that parks are being “loved to death”, as a National Geographic Magazine article once stated. But it also means that not all natural sights are freely accessible to everyone anymore. I am not sure this should be the case. I just stumbled across “The Wave” again, e.g. see Wikipedia, and how hard it is to actually be allowed to get there. There is an online lottery for which you have to pay USD 7 for each entry irrespective whether you win an entrance ticket or not, and there is a daily lucky pot of 10 admissions in the BLM bureau in Kanab (UT), which means many people drive from Page AZ the long stretch to UT everyday to try their luck. While this reduces “emission” at the sight (The Wave / Vermilion Cliffs) itself, it adds an incredible amount of “emissions” for travel and logistics. It should not be a money and effort issue in who can queue the longest to get to a unique feature of nature. I think this is not the right way to do it yet don’t have a better solution at hand right now. It just makes me feel a bit jealous as I always wanted to see The Wave but will certainly not go through this hassle. Lucky me that I found my own “small wave” at Escalante this afternoon.