Okay, 99.9% of you are scratching your heads and trying to figure out what the subject of this post means. Allow me to explain. When I was planning my retirement all I heard from friends, coworkers, and fellow church-goers was “but what are you going to do?” Well, about 10 years ago I fell into one of my hobbies, ham radio, backwards. I never really got into all that much except to chat with other hams on the way home from work in the evenings. Sitting in a dark room (known as a ham shack) talking on a radio to strangers didn’t really appeal to me. The I discovered Parks On The Air and things changed for me.

The whole point of Parks On The Air or POTA was to get ham radio operators out of their ham shacks and out into nature. See sunshine. Breathe fresh air. Touch grass. So you get a portable radio, a portable, power supply, a portable antenna, go find a valid park on the POTA website and THEN talk to strangers. Well, now that was for me! How you make your radio, power source, and antenna mobile is completely up to you.

The goal is to make 10 contacts over ham radio to other operators around the country and around the world. Once you make those 10 contacts the park is considered “activated” and you receive credit for activating that park. You are now a POTA activator. The people who contact you are POTA hunters. They are trying to get credit for contacting people in as many parks as possible. This isn’t just US, this is world wide and has breathed new life into ham radio.

I planned a camping trip this week so that I would be near a spot where I could attempt to activate 3 parks simultaneously. On Wednesday I hauled my travel trailer up to Moccasin Point Campground which would be my staging area for Thursdays attempt to activate Tuolumne Wild and Scenic River, Stanislaus National Forest, and Yosemite National Park simultaneously. The trick is you have to be within the boundaries of all three of those areas to make it count. I found a spot that I thought would work. But then I think a lot of things so… I checked with the people who run POTA. They said that they couldn’t tell me it wasn’t impossible. Huh? Sounds like a green light to me!

If you look at the area where the gray shading (Yosemite National Park) and the blue shading (Stanislaus National Forest) intersect over the south fork of the Tuolumne River, that is where I set up.

What a great day. The radio bands were terrible. I was only able to make any contacts on 20 meters. Normally I can do 10m, 15m, 17m, and 20m. But today the atmosphere just wasn’t having it. Still, there were no clouds, it was about 72 degrees, and I made 19 contacts; more than enough to activate the three parks. I packed up and slowly made my way back to Groveland via Hardin Flat Rd rather than Hwy 120. I decided to swing by Rainbow Pool just to relive some old memories most of which were pleasant. The one where my niece Tracey started cramping and almost drowned was not one of them. Luckily my girlfriend at the time saw her and pulled her to the edge of the creek. They charge a day use fee there. I chatted with the nice Japanese lady who was manning the toll booth (okay, it was a table with a sun shade over it). I told her I just wanted to drive through and take a picture so she didn’t charge me anything. Then made my way back down Priest’s Grade and back to the campground.

So, all in all, a wonderful day! So my answer to all those people who asked what am I going to do when I retire hasn’t changed one bit; “ANYTHING I want.”