‘National Parks’: Screenings, events and travel deals related to the Ken Burns documentary

On Sunday, the new Ken Burns documentary “National Parks: America’s Best Idea” will begin its 12-hour trek (in two-hour segments) through the wilds of American living rooms, coloring TV screens everywhere with the sights and ’scapes of our public lands.

The documentary may have — even before you’ve set eyes upon it — gotten you itching to visit a national park. And that’s likely just fine with Burns. As Times writer Mary McNamara put it in her review of the “gorgeous and exhaustive” film: “The main goal of Burns and his co-creator Dayton Duncan appears to be launching people off their backsides and into the wilderness.”

At the more popular parks, you may want to prepare for lots of company on the trail. But thankfully, since the U.S. is home to 391 national parks, there should be enough love to go around. Below are details to plan a viewing — or better yet, an inspired trip, so you can see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

Where & when to see it

The documentary will start airing on PBS on Sunday at 8 p.m.

And there are plenty of opportunities to see portions of it out and about. A free sneak-peek screening of the documentary “will be shown continuously from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sept. 26 and 27 at the National Park Service Visitor Center and the Satwiwa Culture Center, both in Thousand Oaks,” reported the Outposts blog.

Numerous U.S. parks, including Yosemite National Park, will be showing parts of the film as well. A screening and celebration are planned at the Ellipse in Washington.

For a 26-plus-minute extended preview right now (plus some food for thought and passionate comments), see this blog post from the Big Picture and see the YouTube video at the bottom.

Special events

Many parks are taking advantage of the timing of the documentary release, which shares a weekend with National Public Lands Day on Saturday. One cleanup scheduled in Olympic, Wash., is titled “Make America’s Best Idea Even Better Service Event.”

If you feel like your 12 hours of potential documentary-viewing might be better spent in direct action, check out various regional options for volunteer projects on National Public Lands Day.

Travel deals

We’ve started to see a handful of travel deals mentioning Burns. I previously blogged about one by a lodge in Mesa Verde National Park for a two-night stay, park tour and DVD set of “National Parks” for $349 pretax.

Among other park-accommodation entities offering documentary-related deals are Denali Park Resorts in Alaska and Togwotee Mountain Lodge, a gateway to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

– Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Photo: Ken Burns checks his iPhone in Glacier National Park, one of the filming locations. Credit: Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 25, 2009 at 2:26 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Arts & Culture, California, Deals, Eco-Travel, Fall, Family & Kids, Festival, Last Minute, Los Angeles, National Parks, News, Tips & Advice, Outdoors & Adventure, Yosemite National Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.