We arrived at Kings Mountain
National Military
Park ready to start our
new adventure volunteering.
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Kings Mountain National Military
Park’s Visitor Center
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We started out working in
the Visitor Center, which has been very busy for two
main reasons: passes and glasses.
SENIOR PASSES
The National Parks offer several
types of passes.
US citizens 62 years old or older are eligible to
purchase the Senior
Pass, a lifetime pass
that enables the card holder to wave entrance fees at many parks. Recent
legislation upped the fee from $10 to $80 effective August 28, 2017. This made
national news and people are flocking to their nearest park to obtain a Senior Pass
while it’s still $10. The parks are barely keeping up with demand for these
passes and Kings Mountain National
Military Park
ran out of cards. When they ran out, they took down names and phone numbers of
some 200 people. So Barbara’s first job at Kings Mountain
was to call people on the list telling them a shipment of cards came in and
Bill’s first job was directing the steady stream of seniors as they came in the
door. It’s a great deal if one plans to visit parks with fees.
ECLIPSE GLASSES
We’ve also had a steady
stream of visitors for eclipse glasses.
The path of the total solar
eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017 goes through South
Carolina about an hour away from Kings Mountain.
Kings Mountain National
Military Park
ordered a large supply of glasses, but did not anticipate the overwhelming
demand. Evidently someone posted on their personal Facebook page that Kings Mountain
had glasses and it went viral, so more people came to the park then were
anticipated.
So despite thinking we
arrived at a quiet time, many people have come to the park and we have been busy.
