I'm Jason Epperson. This is RV Miles, and it's time for the latest in RV and camping news.

Welcome back, everybody. First up, a quick update on the current situation with national parks

and other federal recreation lands during the current shutdown of the federal government.

As expected, most commonly accessible national park sites remain open, while most buildings remain closed,

as well as areas that are normally gated off during certain times.

As a general rule, if a facility or area is locked or secured during non-business hours,

buildings, gated parking lots, etc., it should be locked or secured for the duration of the

shutdown, a contingency plan posted online by the Interior Department states. I'm going to go

into more detail as to the affected parks and open and closed areas on our parkography channel

in a video tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7th. But I wanted to give folks with plans to RV or camp on

public lands a bit of an update here. The most important thing to know is that the situation at any

park can change in the coming days. So if you have plans to go somewhere, make sure you keep

checking in on that site. Don't just look and see that it's open and assume that when

you get there, it still will be. Sometimes that's going to mean more closure. Sometimes it's going to

mean things are going to open up. Since the shutdown began on October 1st, several areas of

Great Smoky Mountains National Park that had been closed, including the Cades Cove Loop Road and the

Parks Visitor Centers,

have now opened through a coalition between the states of North Carolina and Tennessee

and the local city and county governments. They're all working together to secure funding

to keep the park open to support the local economies. The state of Utah has committed to

providing the funding to keep its five national

parks and other national parks service sites open, and parks themselves are allowed to use their

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