2021 Year In Review: Our Favorite National Park Traveler Podcasts

Year-end can mean a lot of traveling, and whether you're flying or driving, it's nice to have something to listen to. While queuing up 52 weeks of National Parks Traveler podcasts might overwhelm you, here are some episodes from 2021 we think you'll like. Some are brain candy, others present issues for your consideration.

Episode 99: A Perspective On The Appalachian National Scenic Trail

2021 marks 100 years since forester and planner Benton MacKaye penned an article that conceived a trail connecting farmlands, mountain ranges, camps, and towns along the Appalachian Mountain Range. Sixteen years later, the Appalachian Trail was completed, traversing through 14 eastern states for more than 2,100 miles. Each year an estimated three million people take to the trail.

Some folks attempt to hike the whole thing from end to end. Some tackle chunks of it at a time in no particular order. And many are content to spend a day or two wandering through stunning mountain ridgelines and secluded white pine and hemlock forests.

In honor of this anniversary, Lynn Riddick met up with one A.T. enthusiast who has experienced the colossal physical and mental challenges of tackling the entire trail…and its immense rewards.

Episode 101: Searching For The Missing In National Parks

Each year, there are thousands of search-and-rescue incidents logged across the National Park System. They typically involve missing hikers, visitors who get injured in falls, boating accidents, or climbing accidents.

The Intermountain Region of the National Park Service – a large swath that runs from northern Montana to the Rio Grande River in Texas -- is the largest in the agency, and is home to many of the most beautiful, and dangerous, national parks. Yellowstone has boiling waters and grizzly bears, Grand Canyon has that deep canyon, and Rocky Mountain has alluring, and rugged, backcountry.

To learn more about search and rescue in general, and searches at Rocky Mountain National Park, we’ve reached out to Kyle Patterson, the park’s spokesperson, and Mike Lukens, a climbing ranger who often leads rescue missions in the park.

Episode 109: Great Smoky's Wildlife Corridors

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an ideal place to see bear, elk and other mammals, large and small. But too often the place these wild animals are seen most is dead along the side of Interstate 40 in the Pigeon River Gorge, victims of a fragmented habitat combined with an increasing number of motor vehicles.

A collaborative effort to study wildlife mortality from motor vehicle collisions and find solutions for wildlife to safely cross this winding highway along the Pigeon River outside the national park is fully underway with nearly 100 stakeholders in North Carolina and Tennessee.

The Traveler’s Lynn Riddick reached out to Jeff Hunter, facilitator of the project, to learn how it will come to fruition and the greater benefits to us all when we create safe places for animals to cross roadways

Episode 113: Emergency Medicine In National Parks

It’s a sound you instantly recognize, and one you hope isn’t coming to your location. It’s the wailing siren of an ambulance responding to an emergency. In the National Park System during the height of summer, the sound can be very familiar.

In this week’s show, we sit down with a paramedic who triggers the siren when he jumps into his ambulance in response to a call for help. It’s a conversation that will leave you with a better understanding and appreciation for the vital role these individuals serve in seeing that national park visitors who are injured or come down with a debilitating illness receive prompt care and are able, if possible, to resume their vacation.

Episode 116: Diving Into The National Park System

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. 

Episode 117: Yosemite For The First Time

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, National Parks Traveler 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.

Episode 119: Discussing The Public Lands Rush

The coronavirus pandemic of the past year prompted many across the United States to discover, and rediscover, the joys of being outdoors in nature. Across the country there were at times record numbers of visitors to our national parks, national forests, Bureau of Land Management Lands, and state park lands. You might call it a land rush, and one that saw quite a number of people invest in recreational vehicles and boats for their outdoor experiences.

This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at National Parks Traveler. Until just recently the Covid pandemic kept me close to home, but with vaccinations delivered, and the spread of Covid seemingly on decline, I’ve been able recently to get out into the parks. Over a period of four weeks, from mid-April into mid-May, I visited Capitol Reef and Grand Canyon national parks, and even spent four days sea kayaking at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah.

Joining me for that paddling adventure was Joe Miczulski, whose close friendship dates back more than five decades, beginning with two youngsters growing up in New Jersey. From that starting point, we have continually sought the outdoors, through organizing scouting, skiing, hiking and rafting. Together we’ve visited Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada and Yellowstone, hiked into the Sawtooth Wilderness, and rafted the Middle Fork of the Salmon. While Joe went into a recreation career with the U.S. Forest Service, I was able to stay close to the outdoors as a journalist.

On the second day of our Lake Powell journey, we paused to look back over our experiences in the outdoors and speculate over how the land-management agencies will manage the resources under the anticipated crush of visitation in the years ahead. We’ll join that conversation after a short break.

Episode 120: Is The National Park Service Struggling With Its Science Mission?

For many, the National Park Service is seen as an agency of friendly rangers tasked with helping them get the most out of their national park vacation. But the agency is much more complex than that. Indeed, it 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.

With such a role in both the federal government and society, is the National Park Service living up to that role? Is it able to? Is the agency properly using science to guide its mission? To explore those questions, we’re joined today by Michael Soukup and Gary Machlis, coauthors of a new book, American Covenant, National Parks, Their Promise and our Nation’s Future.

Episode 124: Subpar Parks

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. 

Episode 136: What's In Your National Park Library?

Can you ever have enough books in your personal national parks library? Well, not if you’re a true parks enthusiast. Odds are, you’ll run out of bookshelf space before you run out of titles on the parks. 

What books should be in that library at home? Kurt Repanshek and John Miles, National ParksTraveler's book review editor, discuss titles you definitely should have on hand.

Episode 139: Wildlife Extinctions, Recoveries, And Futures

There is no shortage of wildlife news, and little of it lately seems to be positive. We’re in a world-wide extinction crisis. Here in the United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just announced that nearly two dozen species, from the Ivory-billed woodpecker to two freshwater fish species, are extinct.

Drought in the Southwest also is pressuring wildlife and could force changes not only in their populations but in where they’re found. The National Park System is home to countless species, from the robust marine life found around coral reefs at places such as Buck Island Reef National Monument and Biscayne National Park to the bison, wolves, grizzly bears and more found at Yellowstone National Park, America’s Sergengeti.

But how is wildlife in the parks doing? To explore that and other questions surrounding wildlife, we’re joined by Dr. Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society as well as the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair in Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University.

Episode 142 | Grand Teton's Crowds

For Grand Teton National Park, this year has, to put it bluntly, been crazy busy.

In September the park counted 570,584 visitors, the second-highest tally for that month in park history. Notably, it pushed the park’s year-to-date visitation to 3,493,937, a record for an entire year, and with October, November, and December to go.

Grand Teton Superintendent Chip Jenkins discusses the impacts of that visitation.

Episode 145: Exploring Night Skies With Tyler Nordgren

Whenever you’re visiting a national park, be sure to spend some time gazing up at the sky at night. If you do so on a clear night when you’re at Natural Bridges National Monument, Yellowstone, the backcountry of Yosemite, or Voyageurs National Park, just to name a handful of parks you’ll be amazed, and possibly overwhelmed, by the stars winking back at you.

It’s been said that the night sky represents the other half of the National Park System. It’s in the national parks where you can experience some of the darkest skies you’ll find anywhere.

Our guest this week knows all about that. Artist, author, astronomer and Night Sky Ambassador Dr. Tyler Nordgren talks with the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick about the cosmic opportunity that the parks offer to teach the public about astronomy.

Episode 146| Rick Ridgeway's Life Lived Wild

Today we’re talking adventures, friendships, and the environment. And to drive that conversation, we’re joined by Rick Ridgeway, who has traveled the world seeking adventure and, along the way, debated and discussed environmental consciousness with his friends, colleagues and peers. Rick, a climber, kayaker, explorer, filmmaker, and thoughtful writer, has a new book out, Life Lived Wild, that chronicles many of the adventures he’s embarked upon the past five decades or so. 

You can read the Traveler's review of Life Lived Wild here.

Episode 149 | A Conservation Conversation With Kristine Tompkins

Nature seems to be running out of space. As the global human population continues to increase, as sprawl continues to wash over natural areas, the amount of space needed for flora and fauna to thrive and, even, in some cases, survive, is steadily being squeezed by the human footprint.

Concern for nature is not new, but it seems to be accelerating. E.O. Wilson and his Half Earth Project are working to conserve half globe’s the land and sea to safeguard the bulk of biodiversity, while here in the United States the Biden Administration has its 30 by 30 initiative with hopes of preserving a third of the country’s land and water for nature by 2030.

How successful can these initiatives be? What is being done to move the needle, as it were, to see those goals met? Today we’re visiting with Kristine Tompkins, who knows a little about protecting landscapes for nature. She and her late husband, Doug Tompkins, donated more than 2 million acres in Chile and Argentina to those two countries, which in turn were able to create 13 new national parks.