Summer Family Vacation a Must

Printed in the Olathe News on August 9, 2007

Summer Family Vacation A Must
by Leonard Hall

The two-week summer vacation is becoming an infrequent event for most families according to recent surveys. Some Olathe families have children who play summer sports and spend their vacation at week-long sports tournaments.

My family went on a real 2-week family vacation. The trip went from St Louis to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and Black Hills (home of Mount Rushmore) in South Dakota.

The trip is one of those once-in-a-lifetime vacations which every Olathe family should take.

In St Louis, Olathe Club of the Deaf (OCD) men’s and women’s softball teams played in the regional Midwest Athletic Association of the Deaf (MAAD) tournament.

The OCD men’s team took 3rd place and will advance to the National Softball Association of the Deaf tournament next week. The OCD women’s team took 5th place.

The MAAD regional tournament consists of teams from 10 neighboring states, where the best teams qualified to play in a national softball tournament.

We saw many groups of vehicles with girls softball players traveling to national softball tournaments in St Louis, Denver, and Sioux Falls. Other national softball tournaments include those in Lawrence, Kansas and Burlington, Iowa.

A daughter of my deaf friend played in a girl national softball tournament in Tulsa last week. Her team had a losing record in league but maintain to qualify for the 64-team national tournament, which was really a regional tournament.

After going to St Louis, we went onto the beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The grandeur views of the mountains are wonderful.

Unfortunately, the Pine Bark Beetles are destroying forests in Colorado.

The infestation is rapidly killing most of the tall fir, pine and spruce trees in the forests. Last year, about 5% of the trees were dying. This year, nearly 95% of the trees had turned brown and will die in some areas.

Because of global warming causing a warmer climate in Colorado, specific species of the beetles live longer and multiply faster eating mostly through the vital parts of mature trees.

One forest ranger said it is a matter of time when most of the forests in the Colorado mountains will be bare. Fortunately, the beetle infestation has not spread to Wyoming or South Dakota because of higher elevation and cooler climate.

The ranger said that forest fire is one way to battle the beetle infestation, but the policy has been to prevent forest fires to protect buildings and homes.

The 1988 Yellowstone National Park forest fires wiped out 40% of the park. It turned out to be a blessing as it acted as a barrier to future beetle infestation.

(Leonard Hall writes a weekly column for the Olathe News. He can be reached at Legalnetwk@aol.com.)