RV News: Grand Canyon Fire Scandal, Bear Attacks, Park Openings & Major Industry Merger
RV Podcast - Stories From The Road
Mike Wendland
4.5 • 704 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week's RV news is big. A congressional hearing reveals what really happened when the Grand Canyon burned. A potential mega-merger could reshape every RV on the road. Bears are attacking hikers at the most visited park in America. And the national parks are opening - with some major changes you need to know before you go.
In this episode:
- The Dragon Bravo Fire scandal: did the NPS let it burn on purpose? Congress wants answers.
- Fire season is already here - Southeast RVers, there are campfire bans in effect RIGHT NOW
- Patrick Industries and Lippert in merger talks - the two companies inside your RV want to combine
- Bears attacked six hikers at Great Smoky Mountains in two weekends - here is what not to do
- Grand Canyon North Rim reopens May 15 after the most destructive fire in park history
- Glacier National Park drops its reservation system for 2026 - finally
- Acadia, Yellowstone updates - and an RV height warning Acadia visitors must hear
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning, good morning, and welcome to the Monday News edition of the RV Lifestyle Podcast, |
| 0:05.1 | the longest running weekly RV lifestyle podcast in the U.S. I'm Mike Wendlin, coming to you this |
| 0:11.4 | Monday morning with the stories that matter most to RVers right now. If you are new to this |
| 0:16.8 | news edition of our podcast, let me tell you something about how it works, because it matters. |
| 0:21.7 | I spent more than 30 years as a professional journalist. I covered presidents, wars, |
| 0:26.2 | consumer fraud, government corruption, everything in between. I won 18 Emmy Awards doing it. |
| 0:32.2 | The one thing that was drilled into me from day one never left is this. You source everything. You don't report what you |
| 0:39.9 | heard. You report what you verified. And that's exactly how we do it here. Every story in this |
| 0:45.3 | Monday news edition is sourced. I don't traffic and rumors. I don't repeat forum speculation. I don't |
| 0:51.5 | pass along manufacturer's spin without telling you where it came from. |
| 0:55.5 | If we say it, we can back it up and we do. The full transcript of today's show and every source |
| 1:01.6 | linked and organized by story is posted at RVpodcast.com under the transcript tab. That's RV |
| 1:09.6 | podcast.com. Check us out. Check out RVPodcast.com. |
| 1:10.9 | Check us out. |
| 1:11.7 | Check out our work every week without fail. |
| 1:14.8 | And hey, if you like what we do in this podcast, |
| 1:17.1 | I'd be very grateful if you'd give us a nice review |
| 1:20.1 | on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to us. |
| 1:24.4 | All right, let's get into it. |
| 1:27.2 | Story one, fire season is here and the Grand Canyon |
| 1:30.8 | fallout and the road ahead. We're going to lead today with fire. And I want to start with the |
| 1:35.6 | story out of Washington this week, a story about what happened last summer at the Grand Canyon |
... |
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