I seem to be spending a lot of time in swamps lately. It's actually not a bad time here in New England to be thinking about swamps – the summer and fall of 2024 were very dry here, and many ...

There was supposed to be parking for three cars along the southwest corner of Hyannis Pond WMA in Barnstable, Massachusetts. What I found instead were several large pieces of construction equipment, torn up earth, and what was once the sign ...

You can't go too far down the road in New England before running into a cranberry bog. Cranberries love the cool weather and grow on ground that might not support other crops, plus they are an easy crop to harvest ...

On Saturdays and Sundays you can drive right up Radio Road to the very top of US-1196 San Bruno Mountain State Park, just a few miles southeast of San Francisco and nearby Daly City in California. It was a Saturday, ...

I don't typically hunt for popular parks to activate. You'll notice that the POTA Map color-codes references in a way that highlights parks that have been activated five or few times with a green spot, versus a red one for ...

I was on a POTA rove and the weather just wasn't cooperating. I'd headed south from my QTH near Providence, Rhode Island on a trip to visit friends in North Carolina and Connecticut, and the plan was to spend a ...

The size and stride, about four feet, of the Eubrontes tracks suggest they were made by a large, meat-eating dinosaur, likely a kind of Dilophosaurus, which lived in the American southwest around the same time ...

The 'furnace' part of the park's name refers to an iron smelting furnace that operated on the property in the 1700s. Iron processed here was used to make horseshoes for the Continental Army during the American Revolution. This is an ...

Another beautiful fall day embraced us here in New England in late October with several days of temperatures in the mid-70s and sunny blue skies. I'd spent the past few days prepping, cleaning, and sealing a large deck area and ...

I'm not a mountain-biker, but boy, do I love those guys. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, and for state parks and forests in my area there are often just a small number of marked trails, mainly loops that ...

In early November 2024 New England was blessed with a short stretch of 80ºF, sunny weather in what had already been a mild fall. I took the opportunity to visit a few new state parks in my area, a double ...

Autumn 2024 has been a great time to explore new POTA sites. The weather has been unseasonably mild, with temperatures reaching into the high 60s many days, and plenty of sunshine. Even better for POTA, most of the parks are ...

In the summertime you'll be lucky to find a parking spot at this popular park in the eastern part of Massachusetts. You might recognize Hopkinton from the town's distinction as the starting line for the Boston Marathon, held in April ...

Most people head for Cape Cod at the start of summer for its incredible beaches. You get two different flavors -- the Cape curls around like someone flexing their arm around Cape Cod Bay, and the result is a long ...

I'd overnighted in South Hadley, Massachusetts after spending the previous day, the 31st of October, hiking and activating US-5636 Mt. Greylock. I mention the specific day because in Massachusetts the state parks shut down quite a few of the roads ...

Whitehall is one of the small handful of parks in my area that I've spent some time at in my pre-POTA life, kayaking on the reservoir and hiking the six-mile loop trail. I'd already spent some quality time here and ...

This is the mountain that inspired Henry David Thoreau to write, in 1858, "I think I could spend a year on the mountain, wandering over its table-lands or sitting on its peaks, and then I should be compelled to go ...

Take a look at the topo map below. If someone were to put this on the desk in front of you and ask you to describe the central feature, what would you say? My first thought was that it's an ...

Earlier in the day I'd spent time activating US-4913 Hodgman State Forest in Amherst, New Hampshire, and before that I'd been wandering the grounds of the New England Amateur Radio Fest over in New Boston, not far from Manchester. I ...

Sunday was a spectacular day in New England. We haven't had a frost yet, so it isn't Indian Summer (Indigenous Peoples Summer?), but a stretch of 70-80º F sunny days is so welcome this time of year. The Patriots had ...