My first visit to Cape Hatteras National Seashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina came quite a few years ago, when I was in college and a friend and I drove down from New Jersey in his tiny and cramped Chevy Vega to do some fishing. It was a wonderful trip, and the seashore a great destination if you love surfcasting.

Just off the coast of Maine lies anchored the oldest national park east of the Mississippi, a park with an artistic flair and blue blood in its founding. Though Acadia National Park is small, coming in around 35,000 acres, it plays much bigger, as they might say in golf. You can explore more than 40 miles of bucolic carriage roads, hike to the top of Cadillac Mountain, search tide pools for marine life at low tide, or kayak the waters surrounding Mount Desert Island.

In this week’s show, Contributing editor Kim O’Connell joins me to discuss some of the stories from across the country that we’re working on at the Traveler and will be rolling out on the Traveler in the weeks and months ahead. And Lynn Riddick has a short story about a unique fundraiser that’s giving Wind Cave National Park new tools to manage and learn about the genetically pure bison herd there. 

This week we continue our conversation with Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly on the state of his park. We discuss efforts to greatly reduce the number of invasive lake trout in Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone’s infrastructure needs, and some of the conservation projects park staff are working on.