Posted 4/15/2004 09:01:00 PM by Douglas

Cell phones don't annoy people. Annoying people do.

Cell phones have long been virtually unavoidable on city streets and in shopping malls. But they now are showing up in some of the very places people go to get away from it all: national parks.

For park managers, this is a challenge. Officials with the National Park Service say they want to meet the needs of visitors and provide for their safety. But they also must protect the park and the visitor experience. And there is no set policy on how to strike this balance.

I don't get it. An obnoxious person having a loud conversation with a cell phone is no less obnoxious just because they're having it with another person. So what's the problem?

‘‘It's possible you could come to a trail in Yellowstone and see someone yakking on the phone to their stockbroker,'' said Dennis McKinney, development director at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Possibly, but what about the lost, stranded and otherwise helpless park attendee that is desperately relying on this technology? Cell Phones are here to stay, and I don't think anyone would be a proponent for putting a tower in the middle of Old Faithful, but that doesn't mean they're not useful, and certainly doesn't mean they're going to go away.

‘You can't control what they do at Old Faithful like you can't control what they do in downtown New York,'' she said.

If the millions of people that go to Yellowstone want a cell phone, you better believe that there are going to be towers blanketing the perimeter of Yellowstone.

But if you want to get rid of the truly annoying visitors at our national parks, let's start with people with 40 foot RVs, towing a car, towing a boat, towing a snowmobile. They're the ones I can do without.