On the road with Ken

Ken Burns’ 12-hour traipse from Acadia to Big Bend to Glacier to Gates of the Arctic should be beautiful and packed with historical wonder — even if the boyish filmmaster with the bowl haircut stays true to form and runs a couple of hours too long.

is the Burns documentary factory’s Next Big Thing, coming to PBS in fall 2009

I’d sure like to tour the parks and get paid for it. (I’d ditch the dusty campsites and stay in the fancy hotels — it’s $482 a night at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee, a great price for getting back to nature on public lands.)

Burns has decided that the idea to establish national parks was just as radical and American as the Declaration of Independence, and he will round up the usual zillion old diary entries and brainy talking heads to support his theory.