What will the 21st century national park campground look like? What amenities are you interested in finding when you pull into a campground? Derrick Crandall, counseler for the National Park Hospitality Association, joins us to discuss two studies that examine the campgrounds, the issues they face, and the demands today’s campers want.
By Kurt Repanshek - April 12th, 2020
:02 National Parks Traveler introduction
:12 Episode introduction with Kurt Repanshek
3:03 North Cascades Institute promotion
3:22 Grand Teton National Park Foundation promotion
3:56 What Should 21st century National Park Campgrounds Look Like?
21:12 National Parks Traveler Coronavirus edition promotion
21:24 Yankee Freedom promotion
22:00 Friends of Acadia promotion
22:31 21st Century Campground Discussion With Derrick Crandall Continues
37:34 Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation promotion
37:58 RVShare.com promotion
38:32 Washington’s National Park Fund promotion
39:17 Florida Impressions: A preview of upcoming stories from Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve
48:24 Episode Closing
48:43 Orange Tree Productions promotion
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Smokies Life, which most of you who closely follow Great Smoky Mountains National Park know was previously known as the Great Smoky Mountains Association, produces educational and informational materials for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This week we’re joined by Laurel Rematore, the chief executive officer of Smokies Life, to discuss the name change as well as how her organization lends a big hand to the Park Service staff at Great Smoky.
Have you ever closely inspected the landscape when you’re touring the National Park System, particularly in the West? You never know what you might find.
Back in 2010 a 7-year-old attending a Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park spied a partially exposed fossil that turned out to be the skull of a 32-million-year-old saber-toothed cat.
If you’ve ever visited Petrified Forest National Park you’ve no doubt marveled over the colorful fossilized tree trunks. There are also fossilized trees on the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, but nowhere near as colorful.
Wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, once roamed across the northern tier of the United States, and as far south as New Mexico in the Rockies and southern California in the Sierra Nevada range. But after more than a century of trapping and habitat loss, wolverines in the lower 48 today exist only as small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and northeast Oregon.
Spur a discussion about traveling to a national park for a vacation and odds are that it will revolve around getting out into nature, looking for wildlife, perhaps honing your photography skills, or marveling at incredible vistas.
Will the discussion include destinations that portray aspects of the country’s history, or cultural melting pot?
Tens of millions of people in the United States will be able to witness a Total Solar Eclipse on Monday as the rare astronomical event cuts a path from Texas to Maine, up to 122 miles wide in some spots. This is a great opportunity to see the exact moment when the moon fully blocks the sun, creating a blazing corona visible to those observing from the center line of totality.
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The Essential RVing Guide
The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.
This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.
You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.
So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.
Comments
Thanks for this podcast with Mr. Crandall of the camping industry. I do need to respond to his statement about putting wifi into national park campgrounds: "If you don't want wifi, just turn it off." With all respect, that misses the point. Wifi in campgrounds will allow my neighboring campers to stream movies from their picnic table, within easy earshot of my tent. If people are going to camp in a national park campground, they should be focused on nature. Leave the tech at home.
This reflects a fundamental disagreement over the essential nature of the national park experience.
Great Podcast. Thank you.
In this episode you refernce two recent studies, where can we access those?
Tyler, here's a link to our written story on this topic, and in it you'll find a link to the reports.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2020/04/national-park-service-working-envision-21st-century-campground