National Park Scouts

This is part 4 of our Mount Rainier National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Mount Rainier National Park for kids:
Part 1: Fire Inside the Frozen Giant
Part 2: Glaciers on a Volcano
Part 3: Ice Worms
Part 4: Wildflowers and the Pacific Jumping Mouse

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As 20 feet of snow finally melt away, the subalpine meadows kick off a high-speed race against time. Discover how glacier lilies grow under snowbanks and why thousands of colorful wildflowers bloom all at once to outsmart a short summer. Plus, we meet an unusual meadow resident: the elusive Pacific jumping mouse, a tiny athlete that leaps over five feet in a single bound and hibernates for eight months straight. Play along with our "Beat the Mouse!" game, guess the mystery animal sound, and listen to Ranger Katarina explain how meadow roots hold hands underground.

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ What meadow wildflower do you want to see?

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 3 of our Mount Rainier National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Mount Rainier National Park for kids:
Part 1: Fire Inside the Frozen Giant
Part 2: Glaciers on a Volcano
Part 3: Ice Worms
Part 4: Wildflowers and the Pacific Jumping Mouse

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Worms… on a glacier?! High on Mount Rainier, something wiggles up out of the ice every summer evening: the ice worm, the only worm known to spend its whole life in glacier ice. It melts if it gets too warm, can’t survive if it gets too cold, and comes out for dinner on pink “watermelon snow.” 

Dig into a real mystery scientists still haven’t solved: how did a worm that melts travel 1,200 miles? We are so luck to have Ranger Kat from Mount Rainier sharing with us again! Hear about the surprising animals she’s found in the park, from a rare Cascade red fox to banana slugs!

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ Would you rather see a Cascade Red Fox or a Banana Slug?

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 2 of our Mount Rainier National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Mount Rainier National Park for kids:
Part 1: Fire Inside the Frozen Giant
Part 2: Glaciers on a Volcano
Part 3: Ice Worms
Part 4: Alpine Meadows and the Pacific Jumping Mouse

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A river made of ice. A river the color of milk. A bird that swipes sandwiches and glues them to trees. Scouts explore Mount Rainier's glaciers and learn how snow squishes into ice. Together, we visit the place 93 feet of snow fell in one winter, meet the ice caves at the top of Mount Rainier and the milky river that forms in the caves at the bottom of the glaciers. Plus, we play a game of Would You Rather AND hear from Ranger Kat what it's like to stand near a glacier.

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ What type of park ranger job would you like?

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 1 of our Mount Rainier National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Mount Rainier National Park for kids:
Part 1: Fire Inside the Frozen Giant
Part 2: Glaciers on a Volcano
Part 3: Ice Worms
Part 4: Alpine Meadows and the Pacific Jumping Mouse

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Will Mount Rainier ever wake up? Join us as we explore what it really means for a volcano to be active and learn how a team of scientists acts like the mountain's doctor to give Mt Rainier regular "checkups". Take a journey underground to explore the science of stratovolcanoes, rising magma, and the ocean plate moving deep underground. Special guest Ranger Kat drops in to share her favorite place on the mountain and reveals where you can see volcanic activity in action. No need to be afraid of this volcano - tune in to find out why!

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ Would you rather visit the Emmons Glacier vista or Longmire Springs?

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 4 of our Congaree National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Congaree National Park for kids:
Part 1: The Forest that Floods on Purpose
Part 2: The Race for the Light
Part 3: Lights Out in the Swamp
Part 4: War Zone on the Mosquito Meter

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Why does Congaree National Park have a meter with a setting called "War Zone"? Unpack the mystery behind the park's famous Mosquito Meter and discover why the forest intentionally leaves the bugs alone. Then, venture inside standing dead trees (aka "tree apartments") to meet squeaking beetles, hole-carving pileated woodpeckers, and the decomposer heroes that turn rotten wood back into soil for giant trees.

This small park leads us on one of our buzziest adventures yet!

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ If you could be a bug for a day, which one would you be?

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 3 of our Congaree National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Congaree National Park for kids:
Part 1: The Forest that Floods on Purpose
Part 2: The Race for the Light
Part 3: Lights Out in the Swamp
Part 4: War Zone on the Mosquito Meter

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Deep in the swampy, pitch-black forest of Congaree National Park, thousands of fireflies are blinking against the dark, and a scientist is crouched in the mud holding up a tiny LED light. Today, we go into the night to discover how fireflies nudge their internal clocks to lock into a single rhythm. But here's the best part: while scientists have figured out how these bugs flash together, nobody on Earth fully knows why they do it! Grab your red-light flashlights and get ready for a swamp showdown, a hidden animal call, and a dark-room family Scout Mission!

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ If you could build a fake signal to communicate with any animal: a light, a sound, a smell, anything. Which animal would you pick, and what would your signal say?

Thank you Laura Erickson for providing the mystery park sound today!

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 2 of our Congaree National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Congaree National Park for kids:
Part 1: The Forest that Floods on Purpose
Part 2: The Race for the Light
Part 3: Lights Out in the Swamp
Part 4: War Zone on the Mosquito Meter

Imagine starting your life deep in the dark, muddy shade of a swamp, racing thousands of tiny neighbors for a single patch of sunlight way up high! Welcome to Congaree National Park, home to the Tree Olympics and more record-breaking champion trees than anywhere else in North America. Today, we meet a pine with the best name growing in the mud, learn the unsolved mystery of Bald Cypress "knees," and find out why Sweetgum wood is actually tougher than pure gold. Plus, discover how muddy swamp water stopped loggers in their tracks and saved this incredible forest twice! 

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ Say Loblolly three times fast!

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 1 of our Congaree National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Congaree National Park for kids:
Part 1: The Forest that Floods on Purpose
Part 2: The Race for the Light
Part 3: Lights Out in the Swamp
Part 4: War Zone on the Mosquito Meter

How does a forest flood on a warm, sunny day without a single drop of rain nearby? In this episode, we solve the mystery of the disappearing forest floor. Kids get to venture deep into South Carolina’s wild floodplain forest to learn how rain falling over a hundred miles away travels down mountains to trigger a slow-motion flood. Along the way, we'll chat about the many animals that have adapted to this wet and swampy lifestyle.

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ What animal would you like to be to escape a flood? 

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 4 of our Yosemite National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Yosemite National Park for kids:
Part 1: The Waterfall That Turns to Fire
Part 2: El Capitan's Impossible Climb
Part 3: Half Dome's Crazy Crack
Part 4: The Great Gray Owl

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What wears a giant winter coat, has lopsided ears, and dives headfirst into two feet of snow? Meet the Great Gray Owl, Yosemite’s quietest and rarest resident.🦉

While the landscape gets a lot of the attention in Yosemite, an incredible owl that lives no where else on Earth hides in the shadows. The Great Gray Owl is the tallest owl in North America AND one of the rarest. 

Discover how lopsided ears turn this featherweight bird into a snow-diving super-hunter, test your ears with a game of Guess Who's Hunting, and think about what it would be like to see this elusive bird swoop silently by.

Thank you to the Institute of Bird Populations for providing us with our park sound today. Visit IBP to learn about their work protecting and researching the Great Gray Owl. 🦉

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ Have you heard an owl hoot before? What do you think it would be like to fly silently in the dark? 

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram

This is part 3 of our Yosemite National Park podcast series. Check out our other episodes on Yosemite National Park for kids:
Part 1: The Waterfall That Turns to Fire
Part 2: El Capitan's Impossible Climb
Part 3: Half Dome's Crazy Crack
Part 4: The Great Gray Owl

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Think you know how Yosemite’s most famous landmark was made? Think again! Almost everyone (including many grown ups!) think a massive glacier sliced Half Dome clean in half like an apple. We love busting myths around here, so join us while we discover what ACTUALLY HAPPENED to Half Dome!

Discover how a single underground crack, a glacier "ice bulldozer," and a process called "onion-peeling" shaped this iconic mountain. Plus, play a game of "Guess That Park Sound" and see who wins the ultimate face-off: El Capitan or Half Dome!

🎒Scout mission included! Experience our fun mission thats great for trips or the backyard with your family.

🏕️ What would you take with you on a hike up Half Dome? 

Visit nationalparkscouts.com for coloring pages, word searches, and bingo cards that go along with this kids podcast.

Hey Scouts! Review & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's the best way for others to find the show too. Thank you for supporting National Park Scouts! 🌲⛺

https://nationalparkscouts.com/

Amazing music from Sheb3ar

Find National Park Scouts on Instagram