AMERICA THE EXCEPTIONAL - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 280

it,” he said. “The way it is in Florida, you can get away with anything until it starts upset-
ting tourism.”
Mary, my youngest sister, turned sixty years old recently and we decided to celebrate
with a sisters-only vacation. Our first stop was the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue
Ridge Mountains. Its development was spurred by the Great Depression, when work crews
from the Civilian Conservation Corps were employed to create the Skyline Drive, snaking
through the park's crests overlooking the Shenandoah Valley. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt dedicated the park in July 1936, saving the mountains from development by en-
trepreneurs in nearby Washington, D.C., a two-hour drive to the east.
Mary is largely confined to a wheelchair today. In her youth she was an avid hiker and
knew the parks around Seattle well. At the park's northern gate at Front Royal, a ranger
told us Mary was eligible for a lifetime free pass. We drove off. Soon she was remember-
ing hikes and sudden rainstorms in the Cascade Mountains. We stopped at the Dickey
Ridge Overlook, then Elkwallow and the Skyland. Mary alternated between staying in the
car and climbing out on crutches, taking in the views of the valley that were decidedly
tame compared to the rugged Northwest. A deer with big ears and short legs bounded over
a stone fence. At timbered Big Meadows Lodge we stopped for a break and told family
camping stories about meals of potatoes, carrots and hamburger wrapped in foil and baked
in the hot fire followed by roasted marshmallows on a stick. We drove all the way down
the 105-mile park to Charlottesville and, after a long weekend, turned around and came
back home via the Skyline Drive. Mary was quiet. “I'll have to come back,” she said. “I
miss parks.”
Many young adults have a similar emotional attachment to theme parks. Tens of thou-
sands of couples have been married at Disneyland and Disney World, making them two
of the most popular “destination wedding sites” in the country. With fairy-tale castles,
Cinderella coaches and an entire fairy-tale wedding department, brides can recreate a ce-
remony in which they resemble a princess with Prince Charming by their sides in the
fairy-tale theme park that had been the scene of excitement and fun in their childhoods.
The 2011 wedding at Westminster Abbey of the real British Prince William to Catherine
Middleton, gowned in lace with a full-length veil framing her lithe figure, encapsulated
all of the wedding fantasies played out for profit at the Disney theme parks.
• • •
The Kailua Beach and Dune Management Plan is a 70-page report describing how one of
Hawaii's most spectacular beaches will disappear in the coming decades. Climate change
is the culprit, raising the temperature of the planet, which in turn is raising the level of
the Pacific Ocean, which in turn will erode the fashionable beach on Oahu. The report
was prepared by the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii Department of Land and Natur-