National Park offers, including several for California national parks, are found at www.nationalparksonline.org

The National Park Service has announced that due to a wildfire it will close the Tioga Road from Crane Flat to White Wolf this Labor Day Weekend (Sept. 4 – 6).  There is, however a way past this seemingly impossible obstacle to Tuolumne Meadows and you’ll have it almost entirely to yourself.

Instead of driving the Tioga Road, take Sonora Pass (CA SR 108) from Sonora east to US 395, then south to Lee Vining.  There you can take CA SR 120E into Yosemite National Park and to Tuolumne Meadows.  Or, enjoy the Labor Day weekend visiting the Eastern Sierra and Bodie State Historic Park, Mono Lake, the June Lake Loop and the Walker River for sightseeing, hiking, fishing, cycling, horseback riding or just kicking back.

Feb. 1 is the deadline to sign up to attend a User Capacity Symposium, Feb. 6 – 8, in Yosemite Valley to explore how to approach limiting visitation to Yosemite National Park and other public lands. Participating will be public land managers, researchers, elected officials, tribes and members of the public at large in open dialogue. To participate, email jim_bacon@nps.gov. Attendance is limited to 150.

Several opportunities to attend Yosemite National Park‘s famous Bracebridge Dinner have become available.  Bracebridge is a national cultural treasure, a three-hour-long holiday banquet and concert, conceived by renowned Yosemite photographer Ansel Adams, that occurs in the world-famous Ahwahnee hotel Dining Room.  Approximately 30 seats each night for this highly sought-after event have been packaged with lodging at the luxurious Yosemite View Lodge for the nights of December 18, 19, 21 and 26.  Each dinner seat is $376 per person, including the seven-course gourmet feast and musical pageant.  Rooms at the Yosemite View Lodge vary from $142 to $210 per night, a 20% savings offered specially for Bracebridge guests.  To reserve your Bracebridge Dinner tickets and hotel room package, call 1-800-321-5261.  Hurry, as these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to attend Bracebridge will be gone before you can say, “Jack Frost.”

For its 100th anniversary in 2016, the National Park Service has launched an initiative to set bold goals, clear objectives, specific strategies and increased and accountable public and private investment in the parks. Of over 200 proposals eligible for the NPS’s Centennial Challenge, which will match philanthropic cash donations with federal funding, 17 Yosemite projects were certified as eligible for funding and the park’s base budget stands to increase $3 million, allowing the equivalent of 86 new seasonal rangers in Yosemite. Here’s a list of possible future projects:

• Connect underserved youth and parks
• Create multilingual junior ranger books
• Foster a diverse workforce through internships
• Tell untold stories
• Happy Isles Junior Ranger program
• Archeological site stewardship
• Meadow Songbirds Projects
• Invasive Plant Control
• Restore riparian habitat
• Preserve great grey owls
• Restore Wawona Meadow habitat and historic features
• Create environmental campus
• Rehabilitate Tunnel View
• Rehabilitate Half Dome overlook
• Replace entrance signs
• Reconstruct trailhead access along Tioga Road
• Rehabilitate the most hiked trails