Enjoy a Free National Park Visit in Honor of a Big Birthday

HUMP DAY? We don't need to tell you that the weekday with the most memorable nickname is Wednesday. For Wednesday, that fabled middle ground between the start of the week and the weekend-adjacent Thursday-Friday combo, has long been considered the "hump" people must cross to reach the downslope to Saturday and Sunday. Coworkers wish us Happy Hump Day, as do neighbors we run into, and knowing that we'll need to complete a few humpy happenings, like errands and must-dos, is just par for the course. But what if Hump Day could be Hill Day, Mountain Day, Peak Day, or even Cliffside Day? Those are all rather hump-esque in shape, after all. And, lucky us, one of the fabled Free Entrance Days at the National Parks is about to fall on a Wednesday, the final Wednesday of August 2021.

IT'S THE 105th ANNIVERSARY... of the National Park Service, a celebratory occasion that always appears on the NPS line-up of annual Free Entrance Days. This means that the fee-charging parks you adore, from Yosemite National Park to Death Valley National Park, will skip collecting entrance fees on Wednesday, Aug. 25. So which "hump" will you find and admire on that day? Yosemite Valley's ever-epic Half Dome? The majestic mountaintops of the Panamints in Death Valley? A golden boulder in Joshua Tree? The sky is the limit when it comes to the splendid hump-shaped wonders of California's national parks. But even if you can't make your favorite park on this particular Hump Day, fret not: There are still two more Free Entrance Days to go in 2021, with Sept. 25, National Public Lands Day, coming right up, and Veterans Day on Nov. 11 completing the calendar.