National Park Match Making

0:15Hi, I'm Ryan Davis. And I'm Kiernan Schmidt. And this is Out of Office, a travel podcast.

0:22Kiernan:Fissy Dakin. Hey, Kiernan. Hello, Ryan. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Are you safe? I am so safe I'm in Bogota hanging out I went to see Project Hail Mary last night oh was it good oh I really want to see it it seems like my kind of movie it is definitely your kind of movie it's like yeah yeah it's uh you know there's all these movies right now where people just want to see really competent people do things well and uh that's what this is you're talking about fiction yeah exactly and uh that's uh it am I right that I believe in your Instagram it has a different name in Columbia. Is it called end of the world or something like that?

1:02Yeah, it's like end of the world. That's a little more dramatic. I don't think that Hail Mary translates into it's like a saying. Because it's famously a football thing.

1:12Kiernan:Is it? Yeah, Hail Mary Pass. Isn't that a football thing? You mean like American football? Yeah, American football. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why it doesn't translate. But also you're in a Catholic country. So I feel like it could also translate even better. yeah they might think it's a completely different film you know be a lot of disappointed old catholics there well after after the port of vallarta episode you had a lot of people on edge i think people are really waking up to the risks that you take ryan yeah well i'm i'd love to get on one of those you know vice shows from like 2008 you know travel to it does vice even still exist god i remember it does vice was like everybody thought vice was like the new that was like the next hbo or something you and i went to like an incredibly fancy party yes we did i was just about to say they were part of the wpp family that we were where ryan and i met at an agency world yeah yeah so uh i would if only i could go back in time and and be that guy get an australian accent you know well i hope you get that vice show in 2008 and i this i actually have I've developed like a little side.

2:23Kiernan:I mean, it's like a side side gig because obviously this is my side gig. And then my side side gig is recently I've been being invited onto the Boston area NPR station quite a lot on something called The Culture Show. If you found a way to make less money than doing a podcast.

2:42That's funny.

2:44Kiernan:No, they don't make me pay. So I actually do better on NPR than I do on Out of Office. But it's cool. So basically, I went on there when Secret Boston, my guidebook, originally came out and kind of hit it off with Jared Bowen, the host. So he and I have started to develop a kind of a friendship, I would say, on air. Not off air yet, but on air. And so they've been bringing me back to highlight secret and fun places. It started with places in the book. And now this was the first appearance where they said, how about St. Patrick's Day spots? And so I did a whole bunch of Boston secret and obscure Catholic and Irish famine related places.

3:25Kiernan:Got into Irish history. This is where John Kennedy, JFK Jr. peed here once. I did a great JFK statue of like a young JFK striding forward into the future. It was great. I did highlight to the president. You got the JFK presidential library up here. Of course. Have you been to that? I've never been inside. Oh, next time you're in town, we'll definitely go over there. It's a good one. They have the coconut that he carved a message into when he was in the Navy and got stranded on an island. You're familiar with this story? Is this in PT-109? I don't know what that is. Isn't that the book that Kennedy wrote?

4:07Kiernan:No, he wrote Profiles in Courage. I'm using I'm using wrote in quotes, by the way, but he got a lot of accolades for it. Let's see here. J.F.K. Coconut. I mean, I feel like we can't really tell the half story. All right. PT 109. You're right. It's a PT 109. OK, the J.F.K. Coconut is a historic artifact, a coconut shell inscribed by J.F.K. on August 2nd, 1943 to call for rescue after PT 09 was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. So, you know, we got there. You and I were each about 33 % of the way there. And that's the Tom Hanks film that I've never seen. You're so much more of a movie buff than I am.

4:49Kiernan:I've seen nothing. I was talking about Castaway. Oh, I've seen Castaway. Yeah. That was a volleyball, though, not a cop. Oh, yeah, yeah. God, maybe I'm more of a movie buff. So anyway, I'll throw a link in the show notes for anyone that's interested in listening to the NPR. And I know I'm going on again in a month because we have a holiday here called Patriots Day, which is all around the Declaration of Independence and the launch of the American Revolution. And this being the 250th anniversary, we've got a ton of celebrations going on. I'm going to give some of the obscure stuff that you can go see.

5:22All right. Well, I'd love that for you. And if you ever need me to come on and give my voice as well, I have a lot of Boston tips and tricks.

5:32Kiernan:You don't have that many. Most of your tips are, I know a couch you can stay on, which is in my guest room, and ask Kiernan. Yeah, club cafe, you know. So, Ryan, I don't know if you're yet thinking about travels all through the summer. Are you booked up yet? I haven't decided what I'm going to do this summer. I wanted to go to Brazil. That's still on the table. I mean, that's a large country. Have you thought about where exactly? You know, Rio. Sure, you're going to stay in Rio. You're not going into the Amazon. Not yet. Okay. But you're thinking mostly a South America summer. Yeah. Ryan, South America summer.

6:11Kiernan:Aren't you, did I make up your eventually relocating to Europe? Is that still? That won't be this year. It would be later. So I'm, you know, settled in Columbia. Wow. Settled. Judy, do you hear that? Ryan is settled. Finally. We've been waiting all these years. Well, this episode is, you know, I feel like when it starts to warm up in the Northeast and you're going from March into April, you start getting vacations that are feeling like, oh, wow, you know, summer is not that far away, but it's early enough that you can still make plans. So I thought today would be fun to dig into recommendations based on what type of vacation you're looking for to go to national parks in the U.S.

6:54Kiernan:And I'm not going to I'm not sending you to Yellowstone and Yosemite. Everybody knows those giant national parks. They're not all obscure national parks. A lot of them are well-known, but I'm going to tell you the reason that you would choose them. So if you're looking for a great adventure, whether independent and adventurous and adrenaline pumping, or if you're looking for a place to relax with kids or with the elderly people, I'm going to give you a few tips and tricks. And I'm even going to mention some places we've been together, Ryan. All right. I'm excited for this. I, you know, I love to get out into the great outdoors.

7:28Kiernan:That's you, Mr. Outdoors. He who just said, Rio, I'm not going into the Amazon. Well, Ryan, I think it's time for us to take off. Tell the cabin crew. Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff, please. All right, Ryan. So, gosh, it feels like it's been, in some ways it feels like it was just a second ago that we were going to national parks together. And now it's actually been quite a while. I think we're coming up on maybe two years since we've taken a trip together. Yeah, we got to get that on the calendar, Kiernan. I mean, it's not the easiest time. You got flights being canceled. You got these huge lines at airports.

8:01Kiernan:Did you see the other day, I think it was Denver lost electricity in the airport, and it was just endless amounts of people squished in there. Look, air travel looks really bad in the US right now. Yeah, it doesn't look great. But if you're American, there are certain things that are appealing about staying within America this summer because I feel like the world's not really ready to see us right now. And with everything, I don't know what the state of the war is going to be, you know, at the time this is published, which is just in a couple of days. But I do know that I have many friends in the travel industry, out the travel industry, who are, they're starting to book refundable tickets.

8:44Kiernan:That's what I would say. Yeah, I think, I mean, we're seeing that internationally as well as the US is having its worst travel year in like 25 years or something. So I'm thinking that that's going to manifest itself by people maybe looking to stay a little closer to home. And, you know, it is one of the great benefits of being America that we happen to have a vast land where you can get on a plane and fly for seven hours and still be within the United States, which is, you know, that's not that's not that common everywhere in the world. And there's so many great treasures. And I'm always such an advocate.

9:17Kiernan:The national parks are a great place to try to unplug, try to refresh. And they're one of the great, I think it's actually very befitting to try to celebrate this American anniversary out at a national park this summer. Absolutely. National parks, one of the great things that America brought. So I'll be interested to know, I know you're not the big, you haven't been to that many, a handful, right? I've been to more than a handful. I'm looking at the list here. You've been to some of these on the list. I'm glad. It's so glad you're reading ahead. Believe it or not, every single word of this podcast is already scripted, folks.

9:53Kiernan:And so, well, I'll be interested to hear you pitch in if you agree with my assessment of this list I put together. It's a little bit of a grab bag. So to begin with, I thought, with the news being as stressful as it is and economics being as stressful as it is, maybe you're looking simply for a place that is easy. It is at this time of year that you do start to hear about overcrowding and over tourism in the national parks. It's a definite problem that's really hard at a few parks. So, for example, Acadia, Zion, these stand out in my mind as places that a lot of people want to go and the infrastructure just isn't there for the crowds that come in the warm weather.

10:34Kiernan:So I have a couple that if you're looking for ease, if you are just looking for a great place to go relax, unplug, maybe lose some cell service, and you don't want to be battling people left and right. So I'm talking about ease even of logistics. The two parks that came to mind for me was one, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which I believe you've been to. Yeah, during the pandemic, I spent some time there. Right. This was when you kind of went to Knoxville for a little bit, right? Exactly. Yeah. So I think you'll get why this one comes to mind. It's close proximity to a lot of towns, no major cities.

11:10Kiernan:There's tons of entry points into the park and you can find easy Airbnbs, lots of hotels and motels. It's free entry with tons of scenic drives. And there are long trails, there are short trails, there are hard trails. It's such a nice spread out park, whereas many of the parks have just one or two gateway towns or a single road that leads through the vast expanse. Great Smoky Mountains is much closer to civilization. So there are different airports and different routes to get there. And frankly, it's in proximity to a lot of places where you could just drive three, four hours from a lot of metropolitan areas and be in the national park.

11:52Yeah, it's huge, accessible, and there's a lot of greatest hits. They're kind of spread out.

11:58Kiernan:The other one that came to mind, which I would say is, it does have some of the bottlenecks that I described where there really is like a single road that goes up into the mountains and takes you from one end of the park to the other, but it's Rocky Mountain National Park. And the main reason that this came on to me was this Trail Ridge Road, which is that main road that drives through the park. It is not as overpopulated as sort of that absolute top tier, most famous of parks. And there are tons of things to do just inside the entrance. So unlike some parks where taking the full drive, it's kind of assumed that that's like the big thing you must do at the park.

12:42Kiernan:Glacier National Park stands out in my mind as that. At Rocky Mountain National Park, you can really plant yourself at the parking spots pretty close to the entrance. And you're going to get good hikes, good viewpoints, small hikes out to lakes, areas with wildflowers, areas where you're going to be able to see some wildlife. And I think that it kind of spreads itself out nicely. And for some reason, I feel like Rocky Mountain National Park, and this is just my impression, hasn't broken out into people's minds as much as some of these biggest heavy hitters of the national parks, even though the amazing nature and views you can get there are just as extraordinary.

13:28Yeah, this is a famous park in my mind, though. But I've never been. I would love to go. I've just kind of driven around it. So this is a good wreck.

13:39Kiernan:I would especially recommend it if you're into hardcore hiking. Great long hikes. That'll certainly take you away from any crowds that are accumulating at the entrance points. And so it might be ease of logistics, but you can have that kind of more athletic trip that you're looking for. So for ease, I'm going with Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Now, if you're really looking to avoid crowds, I mean, Rocky Mountain, you know, it'll get its crowd. It's not going to be over. Well, it might be overcrowded. I mean, you were going to see this this summer's tourism picture is very confused, I would say, based on the broader environment.

14:18Kiernan:But if you're really looking for no crowds, I'm not going to recommend the craziest places which are like Katmai in Alaska. A lot of these gates of the Arctic in Alaska. These are places where you have to book a small seaplane where there's no lodging, where you have to. Those are like the super adventurous parks. This list is not inclusive. Those are extreme. No crowds. Exactly. Extreme, no crowds. But these are accessible. They're within normal, regular airport drives. But they are they don't see the the foot traffic that their nature deserves, really. So there's two I've got here. One is called Isle Royale National Park.

15:05Kiernan:This is in Michigan. It's an island in Lake Superior. And you have to travel there by boat. There's no vehicles on the island. And you can get there from Michigan or from Minnesota. So you have options to go, you know, whatever's most convenient from whatever travel hub you're traveling from. And it's really a secluded hike. There's one hotel on the island. They've got moose. They've got wolves. They're in sort of a delicate balance on this ecosystem. And they only see 25 ,000 to 30 ,000 visitors a year. And that's spread across the entire year. That said, it's closed for a giant chunk of the winter.

15:47Kiernan:So it opens back up in April. And if you can figure out the logistics to get to where you leave your car and get the boat over, it's a great two or three day trip where you can do hikes. You can do simple kayaking or canoeing around the island. But it's not as overwhelming as some of these absolutely enormous parks. I don't even know that I've ever heard of this park. It sounds lovely. Isle Royale. And the other one, this is a far way from Isle Royale, North Cascades National Park. Again, not visited by as many as you would think. 15 ,000 to 30 ,000 visitors. It's a mountainous park in Washington State.

16:31Kiernan:It is only a two-hour drive from Seattle. And I'm actually going to recommend another national park that's a good drive from Seattle called Olympic National Park further in the episode. But Seattle's a great launching point to go to Mount Rainier. We actually have in the archives an old episode that I'll link to here, which is a Pacific Northwest National Parks road trip. This is a trip that Catherine and I did a while back. and we took our own itinerary. I put together the itinerary that we took and North Cascades is an easy add-on or worth the trip itself. One little fact about it that I love, though you're probably a little too late to book it for this summer, but you watch these cancellations because you never know, sometimes you can get lucky.

17:20Kiernan:I have not gotten lucky enough to book this yet. One of the places you can stay in North Cascades is called Ross Lake. and on Ross Lake, they have a floating cabin. So big wood cabins that are actually floating on Ross Lake. So it's kind of a neat place to take the family, very atmospheric. Oh, I love that, floating cabins. Yeah, and it's definitely one of these places where you're gonna be even more unplugged than, I mean, not as unplugged as Alaska and Katmai. By the way, I'm referencing Katmai. Do you know Katmai, Ryan? No, I don't. Katmai is famous. I'm sure you've heard of this. Every year in about June, there's a major social media moment where Fat Bear Week.

18:06Oh, of course. That's that.

18:08Kiernan:So that's Katmai. Katmai is famous for its bears and this one area where salmon are jumping upstream where bears station themselves and get fat. And then some brilliant social media person there, um, it came up with like a bracket, like a March madness bracket for the, the fattest bears. And that, listen, that, that will definitely be away from the crowds because it's such limited capacity. As I say, you have to fly there with a seaplane. You have to apply, uh, to get into the housing there. And even when you're there, there are so many bears in the area that you are actually, uh, you're restricted to a electrified fence area.

18:49I really think Ozempic has changed that competition though, but a bit. Yeah. Not what it was.

18:55Kiernan:Um, they should do fattest bear thinnest tourists. Um, so you know, God bless you. If you're able to get into that cat, my lottery, that one's still on my bucket list, but you, you can definitely still get to aisle Royale and you could take an easy day trip out to North Cascades national park, either by stationing yourself for a few days in Seattle, combining it with a Pacific Northwest, uh, trip, or just you know, it's only two hours away. Get up early, go do a few hikes, bring your camera, and then head back to Seattle for a fancy dinner out. Sounds great. I love that. Now, what about if you're looking for animals?

19:35Kiernan:We also have a good episode back in the archives about planning vacations around trying to see an animal and how that's a fool's journey, because you just can't be guaranteed on that one. But this one's got a little bit of a twist. But if you're looking for wildlife, there is one place that I would say is a good guarantee where you're going to get some creatures. And this is Olympic National Park in Washington. And here's why. Olympic, a big part of it is protecting coastline. And it's this glorious, very rocky coastline. I remember we stayed at an Airbnb that was attached to a lighthouse there and like going out late at night and watching the lighthouse lit and just beaming out into the endless ocean.

20:16Kiernan:It was really evocative. And one of the key things to do in Olympic National Park is to go check out the tide pools that they have. Because since the beach has these rocky outcroppings, when the tide goes out, a lot of the ocean water gets caught in these small tide pools where wildlife, this beautiful marine wildlife gets caught until the next high tide comes in. So you have anemones, you have starfish, you have mussels, and it's really fun. You can really fill a day combining kind of a beach lunch with a walk and looking at these tide pools. Great for kids. You can make it athletic by taking a really long walk on the beach, or you can make it really leisurely where, you know, you just pack some food and then you go check out these, uh, these tide pools.

21:05Kiernan:Now, are you, do you know, I didn't know, I feel like maryland didn't have tide pools particularly did it uh no i don't tide pools um not not not really we had marsh so you would get like hermit crabs and and little little crabs and you know um some birds but it wasn't really a tide pool yeah so this this is you're gonna remember these tide pools especially i just remember how colorful they were like these anemones that you kind of these like deep blues and greens that you kind of think you would only see if you went scuba diving. They actually grow in these little communities and there's such interesting science to learn.

21:42Kiernan:And it's just very hands-on. I mean, you shouldn't really be hands-on because you don't want to disturb the natural ecosystem there. But, you know, I think a lot of people, when they think of wildlife, they think, oh, can I go see a bear? Can I go see a moose? And you can, you can see those things in a lot of these parks. I had great moose sightings at Rocky mountain, but if you want guaranteed wildlife, Olympic National Park would be a great place to check out. Living in Washington, got a lot of great parks. Yeah. Oh, the Pacific Northwest, it's a dream. I've got one. Now, this one I think may resonate with you a little, Ryan, which is, if you're looking for what I'm calling other worldliness, I mean, you just saw Project Hail Mary, so surely other worldliness is on your mind.

22:27Kiernan:Absolutely. I like the otherworldly. And these are some of my favorite national parks. They're the ones that you might have to look up. Maybe you haven't heard of them. They're a little more off the beaten path. And often they have, you know, there may be not enormous mountainscapes. They're not the traditional hikes that you would often take in forests. Instead, they preserve a landscape that feels a bit alien or otherworldly, and it's preserved because that's so special. So one that, gosh, this might have been the very first national park I ever went to was the Badlands National Park in South Dakota.