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When traveling to a national park, not everything goes as planned. Maybe you've been disappointed about the crowds. Or maybe couldn't find lodging. Or maybe you weren't able to squeeze in everything you wanted to do. But have you ever found yourself complaining about scenery that you determined to be substandard…or dismissing the exact feature for which the park is known? Today the Traveler's Lynn Riddick -- with voice talent courtesy of Susan Emerson and Stuart Eldridge -- talks to a graphic designer and illustrator who mines the one-star internet reviews from disgruntled national park goers and turns them into something we can all laugh at.
How can aspiring scientists and researchers get a hand in conducting research in the National Park System? Ryan and Julie Sharp, who both spent time working for the National Park Service, raise funds to help college students hoping to conduct research in the parks. Ryan, a professor at Kansas State University, also discusses understanding visitor behavior in parks.
Climate change is here and greatly impacting our weather and long-term climatic trends. In the Southwest, it's having a tremendous impact on water resources across the Colorado River watershed.
Warming temperatures associated with climate change are affecting the Colorado River, and those impacts also are showing up in national parks along the river's path. In this episode, we look at how the ailing river is impacting Grand Canyon National Park.
Go take a hike. Wouldn't that be a great escape this weekend? Some of my most enjoyable hikes have been along the Appalachian Trail. That path was easy to reach when I was growing up in New Jersey. Now based in Utah, the A.T. is a distant aspiration. Much closer are both the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.
This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at National Parks Traveler. All three of those trails – the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and Pacific Crest Trail – are officially recognized as National Scenic Trails. In all, there are 11 trails across the United States that carry that designation. Are they all treated equally when it comes to funding, maintenance, and even completion of an uninterrupted path? Not at all, and we'll dive into those issues and why they are what they are.
The National Park Service could be seen as one of the country's most science-focused agencies, as it deals with all sorts of "ologies" – biology, paleontology, archaeology, sociology, ecology, cetology, bioecology, and, in light of the popularity of dark night skies, even planetology. But is science properly guiding its mission? Former Park Service scientists Michael Soukup and Gary Machlis discuss those questions.
Kurt Repanshek and Joe Miczulski, whose friendship dates back more than 50 years, take time from their sea kayaking trip on Lake Powell at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area to discuss the recent rush to public lands by Americans yearning to get outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic.
As glorious as Grand Canyon National Park is, the national park faces a number of significant issues. National Parks Traveler Editor Kurt Repanshek, along with Special Projects Editor Patrick Cone and Jess Repanshek, Traveler's sound recording engineer, headed to the park in late April to get a better sense of some of the issues that park managers are grappling with and which could alter, possibly significantly, how we experience the canyon. The following podcast previews those issues.
Yosemite National Park is one of the jewels in the crown of the National Park System. It has soaring walls of granite, feathery waterfalls, and high country that takes you into a transformative realm of nature.
This week podcast writer/producer and Yosemite first-timer Lynn Riddick -- along with her traveling companion Michele Hogan -- take us on a trip to this national park, which offers more than 800 miles of hiking trails. They share their light-hearted impressions as they hike along three of the more popular of Yosemite's trails, and the conversations they strike up with some interesting people along the way.
There's a lot to see in our national parks and historic sites, including some pretty interesting things underwater. Lynn Riddick takes a look at the Submerged Resources Center, the arm of the National Park Service that locates underwater resources – whether sunken ships or planes, old ranches or train tracks, coral reefs or kelp forests -- then documents and interprets them. Always with an eye toward their preservation. And with 3.5 million acres of Park Service land underwater, it's an immense yet intriguing responsibility.
Searching for the door that opened Westward Expansion? Find yourself at Fort Laramie National Historic Site in eastern Wyoming.
The history to find across the historic site's grounds, its restored buildings, and in the surrounding countryside, is deeper than first glance might indicate. It's not just a military relic. Fort Laramie truly was an iconic milepost in the nation's history.
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