5th-grader’s advice to other kids: Just park it!
TSAILE, Ariz.
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth
Kaitlyn Bia, 10, poses in her junior ranger regalia with Doug, a stuffed mountain goat she purchased near Glacier National Park last year.
With four national parks, monuments and historic sites within their reservation and several more on its perimeter, most Navajos take national parks for granted – if they don’t consider them a flat-out nuisance, with all their rules and overly inquisitive tourists.
But for a 5th-grader who lives within walking distance of Canyon de Chelly National Monument, the parks have become … well, more than a hobby. More like a lifestyle.
Kaitlyn Bia, 10, who lives at the foot of Black Rock near the headwaters of the De Chelly Wash, took full advantage of the National Park Service’s Every Kid in a Park program, which offers a free one-year National Parks pass to fourth-graders and their families.
Every kid in “a park”? Ha! Kaitlyn managed to visit 47 of them!
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow