Ridiculous Reviews of Some of the Best National Parks | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine

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2021-07-18 07:30:06

Environmental activist and author Edward Abbey spent two seasons, in 1956 and 1957, working as a ranger in what's now Arches National Park in Utah. In Desert Solitaire, his account of those two summers, Abbey writes, "Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhumane spectacle of rock and cloud and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally...."

While most can't compete with Abbey's eloquence, I'd venture to guess that the majority of the 1.5 million annual visitors to the red-rock paradise have something to say about the park's magnificence and beauty.

And it's not necessarily something so nice. Well, at least for one person, who left this scathing review: “Looks nothing like the license plate.” Of course, referring to the standard issue plate featuring Delicate Arch, a 46-foot-tall freestanding sandstone arch, and the state slogan, "Life elevated."

It's bitter reviews like this one that illustrator Amber Share savors. She runs the Instagram account Subpar Parks, which pairs illustrations of national parks with the ridiculously unsavory reviews they’ve received online. The account, launched in 2019, currently has more than 100 posts of artistically drawn national park posters superimposed with real negative reviews she's gathered from Yelp, Google and TripAdvisor. The popular Instagram account has spawned a new book, Subpar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors, out this month.