As much as a national park’s scenery catches you, the sounds you can pick up during your park visits are just as memorable. And, in the case of a howling wolf, bellowing grizzly, or bugling elk, I would suggest that they’re more memorable. This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at the National Parks Traveler. This week, we’re doing away with talking and focusing on listening.

Memorial Day Weekend is the official kickoff to summer. Now, there’s no doubt that many of us have already been to a unit of the National Park System in 2022, but this weekend is the traditional start to venturing into the park system.

If you don’t know where to go, or what to do, I’ve invited Kim O’Connell, a contributing writer at the National Parks Traveler, and Lynn Riddick, the Traveler's masterful podcaster, to help sort through the options. 

In today's podcast we’re taking time to take a look out across the National Park System, and at the National Park Service, to explore how things are on the ground, literally and figuratively. To help me with this discuss, I’ve invited Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, and Phil Francis, the immediate past chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, to discuss recent events, including a new, somewhat shocking, deferred maintenance figure for the National Park System.