To make it easier to experience America’s Great Outdoors, the National Park Service is waiving entrance fees, so visitors can enjoy all 392 national parks for free April 17-25. This is great news for all of you spring breakers out there looking for a quick trip to the great outdoors. For others, its a perfect opportunity to experience your local national parks in bloom this spring.

At more than 100 parks, there will be specials on concessions, lodging, and transportation in the parks to give further incentive to get out and explore.

If that were not enough to get you out in the nice weather and out of the winter doldrums, take a moment to check out the list of events parks plan to have around the country nearly all of which are family friendly. For those of you looking for ways to give back to your community as a way to celebrate this year’s 40th Earth Day, the National Parks Service has more than 400 volunteer opportunities announced.

For those of you resigned to spend the week in your office staring longingly out your window, check out the virtual tours of your favorite national parks and enjoy the scenery virtually!

So which park are you making plans to visit next week? Get out there and explore!

With more and more congestion slowing everyone down on our way to work and polluting our air, Washingtonians and Virginians are finding alternative ways to commute.

“Slugging,” as the pros call it, is a unique version of carpooling. Commuters line up at local metro (subway) stations and are picked up by drivers interested in gaining a rider or two so they can drive in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes. Your mother may have warned you never to hitchhike, but slugging is an organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations. 

The advantage is that while all the single drivers are sitting in traffic, vehicles with a couple or more people are cruising down local highways and getting to work faster with less per person pollution.

And the best part is that it’s FREE because both the driver and the slug (as riders are called) benefit.

Slugging has been around in some form for about as long as there have been HOV lanes in the Washington area, sometime in the early seventies. You’ll have to click here if you are interested in the full story of the commuting method.

If you think this sounds like something you are interested in but don’t live in the Washington, DC area (or, heck, live in MD and wonder why there aren’t slug lanes going to DC from your side of the city) learn how you can set up slug lines locally. It may take some time, but it’s estimated that slugging can save serious dough each year. Calculate what your savings could be.

Image by Flickr user BankBryan used under a Creative Commons License.

If you were walking down the street and you came across a pile of things with a sign that said “free stuff- please take, ” wouldn’t you at least take a look at what is there? Well, now you can do that without leaving the comfort of your own armchair! Grab your laptop and visit the “free section” on craigslist or try this…it’s a “virtual dumpster.” After you register, you can request what you want or what you are willing to give…for free! That’s right! “Free to a good home” saves you money and keeps stuff out of our landfills! What a great way to reduce our consumption of new goods and reuse what we’ve got!