#168: Mailbag!

Dear Bob and Sue: A National Parks Podcast

Matt and Karen Smith

Places & Travel, Nature, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

5 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In our Mailbag! episodes, we answer questions from listeners about the national parks, ranger-led tours, road trips, hiking, camping, backpacking, gear, relationships, and pretty much whatever anyone wants to ask us. In this episode, we cover these topics: · An alternative to visiting the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park while the road is closed due to flood damage, · Road trip suggestions for visiting the Washington and Oregon coasts, · How to deal with crowding in the parks and the consequences of reservations becoming so difficult to get, · Which district of Saguaro National Park we’d choose to visit if we only had one day, · Whether you need bear spray when visiting Washington State’s three national parks, · And more! We now post ad-free versions of our episodes on our Patreon account (search for mattandkarensmith). If you are interested in joining, follow this link to check it out. Subscribe to The Dear Bob and Sue Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and if you’ve enjoyed our show, please leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts. Five-star ratings help other listeners find our show. Follow us on Instagram at @mattandkarensmith, on Twitter at @mattandkaren, on Facebook at dearbobands, or check out our blog at www.mattandkaren.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Now you have to have a reservation, a time to go.
0:03.6	So I think in a lot of these places, the spontaneity is dead.
0:07.8	Yeah.
0:09.5	Yeah.
0:10.6	Yeah.
0:11.9	Did you want me to say more than that?
0:17.0	Yeah.
0:18.1	I was being spontaneous.
0:22.2	Did you want me to be spontaneous? Yeah. I was being spontaneous. Did you want me to be spontaneous?
0:33.8	This is the Dear Bob and Sue podcast, stories of our journey to all the U.S.
0:37.2	National Parks and other public lands. I'm Matt Smith.
0:39.1	And I'm Karen Smith. We're the authors of the Dear Bob and Sue series of books. Welcome to our mailbox episode where we answer questions
0:44.9	from listeners about the national parks, state parks, road trips, hiking trails, and even where to
0:50.9	find the best pizza. In this episode, we'll be answering questions about which unit of Soharo to visit if you only have one day,
0:58.9	an alternative to the closed Ho Rainforest area in Olympic National Park,
1:03.6	and whether or not visitors need bear spray in the three Washington parks.
1:08.9	Plus, we'll outline an epic road trip through the Pacific Northwest and discussed a few
1:14.2	ways to avoid the crowds in the national parks.
1:16.7	All this and more coming up next.
1:25.9	All right, it's been a turbulent couple of weeks.
1:28.8	A lot of upsetting things happening in our federal public lands, our national parks and national forests, BLM lands.
1:35.6	And people have been asking us our opinion about the mass firings of our public land employees.
	...

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