Many thanks to Brian (K3ES) who shares the following guest post:

This map provides an overview of our cross-country road trip. We traveled zig-zag paths from our home in Tionesta, PA to my parents’ home in Martinez, CA, and back again.

Six Weeks and 7300 Miles: Activating on the Road

by Brian (K3ES)

This article gives an overview of a driving trip across the United States and back that included activation of Parks on the Air (POTA) entities in 21 states along the way. We left our home in northwest Pennsylvania on September 18, 2024, and returned on Halloween. During our time away, we spent about 3 weeks driving and 3 weeks visiting with my parents at their home near San Francisco, CA. With such an epic scope, I plan to write several articles about various POTA activations completed during our trip. In fact, I completed one article early, and it has already been published on QRPer.com: K3ES’ Unplanned activation of Yellowstone National Park. This report provides the background and a broad overview of our trip.

The Players

My mom and dad have made the Bay Area of California their home for 40 years. They left Pennsylvania on their own great adventure in the mid-1980s, while I was attending graduate school in Pittsburgh. Dad accepted a transfer, so they packed up the house, committed their belongings to a moving company, and drove their car across the country in 4-1/2 days to meet the movers. I was able to go along on that driving trip (I returned to Pittsburgh by airline), but I have always wanted to do it again, spending a bit more time to see the sights.

My dad is a hero to me. I have never been able to match his work ethic or his ability to plan and execute projects. From home repairs to electronics projects, Dad was always working on something, and generally had several projects going at once. His workshop was well equipped, and he spent a lot of time there. Now, approaching his 90th birthday, Dad has been slowing down. He is no longer able to make use of the shop, but he remembers how important it has been to him. So, we planned this trip to help Mom clean out the shop, and to let Dad see his trustworthy tools moving to a new home where they can be used and appreciated.

Having retired in 2021, my calendar is more open than it was during 31 years of employment. I am grateful for this. My wife, Becky, and I were able to arrange other commitments to give ourselves time for an adventure. So the two of us packed the back seat of my 2015 Toyota Tundra pickup truck for six weeks of travel, being careful to leave seat space for POTA dog Molly. We kept the truck bed empty, so that space would be available to bring home tools and shop supplies from California. This would be our opportunity to travel across the American west. Forty years after my original cross-country driving trip, I would finally get to stop and see sights along the way.

Once we arrived at my parents’ home in California’s Bay Area, Molly had free run of their fenced yard. This squirrel was Molly’s nemesis for the duration. It spent hours across the fence eating fruit in the neighbor’s pomegranate tree. Many chases ensued, none successful.

The Plan

In another article published on QRPer.com earlier this year: K3ES Travels: Ten Days of QRP with Compromised Antennas, I explained Becky’s great idea: that I should activate all 50 of our United States. At that point, I had activated parks in only 6 states. By the time we left on this trip, my total had inched up to 11 activated states. So our goal would be to activate as many of the western states as possible. Ohio, Indiana, Washington, Oregon, and California were already in the done column, courtesy of some previous travel, but that left a lot of territory to cover.

Since we were leaving in September, we were confident that the weather would be favorable for driving across the northern tier states. Leaving California to return home in late October, we knew that snow was possible in the mountain passes, so we planned to take a more southerly route. What remained was to adjust the route to cover all of the states along or near our intended travel path. In total, including a side-trip to activate a new California park during the Autumn Support Your Parks event, we traveled 7300 miles: 3800 miles traveling westward, 200 miles for the California side-trip, and 3300 miles traveling eastward on the return home.

When we left our driveway, we had the broad outline of the route. We also had an idea of some of the parks that I might activate on the trip. We did not have a detailed itinerary. In fact, though we knew the basic route, and we had reserved rooms for only the first two nights. I encouraged Becky to leave things a bit open-ended, despite her penchant for careful planning. This was kind of important, because I would be doing all the driving. Don’t get me wrong. Becky is an excellent driver, it is just that she is intimidated by my truck. We needed its cargo capacity, but I became the sole driver. So we needed to have the flexibility to stop sooner, or press on longer, depending on my ability to continue driving safely.

After stopping for the night, we usually set our travel goals for the next day or two. If we were tired, we would cut the next day’s travel shorter. If not, we might decide to go further. We also settled on the parks we would visit during the next day’s travels. Even then, we allowed ourselves to make changes if an opportunity presented itself, and more than once, it did.

Keeping our travel plans a bit loose worked really well for us, particularly after we discovered that almost all hotels welcomed Molly as a guest (for a nominal pet fee, of course). We had expected more difficulty, and were very pleasantly surprised that nearly every hotel along the way was “pet friendly”. The additional freedom let us alter our plans at times, like adding Yellowstone National Park to the travel route, when we had originally expected to miss it.

On our return trip, we realized that stopping for a park activation worked really well as a break during long days of driving. We could stretch, eat lunch, take Molly for a walk, and CW would help me to clear my head before the remainder of the day’s drive. In fact, we scheduled additional activations in IL, IN, and OH for just that reason, even though I had previously activated parks in those states.

On our final travel day, we stopped at Lake Norman State Park in Ohio. Bands were great, and I took time to complete 30 contacts. The greatest difficulty was ambient noise from the wind blowing across the lake. This flag tells the tale…

The Parks

In the end, I completed 34 activations of 32 distinct POTA entities during the trip. I activated in 18 new states during our travels, and finished with 29 of 50 states activated. When I completed my activation of Mesa Verde National Park, I was within the activation zone of the Park Point SOTA summit (W0C/SJ-019), yielding a simultaneous SOTA/POTA activation. The following Table lists the activations completed during our trip. Before leaving, I had already activated OH, IN, and CA, so they do not count among the 18 new states.

A bench at Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa provided an awesome view of the Mississippi River valley while I was making contacts for the activation.

Molly kept watch while I activated Washoe Lake State Park in Nevada.

At Fort Union National Monument in New Mexico, I could look over the ruins of the large adobe hospital building while I was operating. Fort Union guarded the Santa Fe Trail (now a National Historic Trail and a POTA entity). I was able to make this a 2-fer activation.

Table: Parks Activated During the Trip

Date	State	Park ID	Park Name	QSOs
09/19/24	IL	US-4099	Moraine View SP	12
09/19/24	IA	US-2311	Pikes Peak SP	27
09/20/24	WI	US-1471	Perrot SP	11
09/20/24	MN	US-2466	Afton SP	14
09/23/24	ND	US-5748	Fort Abercrombie SHS	27
09/23/24	ND	US-4239	North Country Trail NST (2-fer with US-5748)	27
09/24/24	SD	US-0850	Minuteman Missile NHS	23
09/25/24	SD	US-0005	Badlands NP	11
09/25/24	SD	US-7487	Buffalo Gap NGL	34
09/26/24	SD	US-0786	Mount Rushmore NM	11
09/26/24	SD	US-4524	Black Hills NF	22
09/27/24	SD	US-0786	Mount Rushmore NM	49
09/27/24	NE	US-7478	Oglala NGL	18
09/27/24	WY	US-0920	Devils Tower NM	15
09/28/24	MT	US-4502	Custer Gallatin NF	16
09/29/24	WY	US-0070	Yellowstone NP	11
09/29/24	ID	US-4475	Caribou Targhee NF	13
09/30/24	UT	US-3075	Great Salt Lake SP	11
10/01/24	NV	US-2640	Washoe Lake SP	12
10/19/24	CA	US-0651	Point Reyes NS	11
10/24/24	AZ	US-0030	Grand Canyon NP	33
10/25/24	AZ	US-0057	Petrified Forest NP	18
10/26/24	CO	US-0051	Mesa Verde NP	23
10/26/24	CO	W0C/SJ-019	Park Point SOTA Summit (joint with US-0051)	23
10/27/24	NM	US-0933	Fort Union NM	17
10/27/24	NM	US-4579	Santa Fe Trail NHT (2-fer with US-0933)	17
10/27/24	OK	US-7481	Rita Blanca NGL	14
10/28/24	KS	US-9191	Pawnee Rock SHS	19
10/28/24	KS	US-4579	Santa Fe Trail NHT (2-fer with US-9191)	19
10/29/24	MO	US-3345	Confederate Memorial SHS	14
10/29/24	MO	US-3356	Mark Twain Birthplace SHS	14
10/30/24	IL	US-4097	Kickapoo SRA	17
10/30/24	IN	US-10247	Lawrence Creek SNR	23
10/30/24	IN	US-2256	Fort Harrison SP (2-fer with US-10247)	23
10/31/24	OH	US-3515	Lake Milton SP	30

Shading denotes my first activation in the indicated state.

My first activation of the trip was at Moraine View State Recreation Area in Illinois.

Activation Experience

One of the amazing things about our beautiful country is that each state has a seemingly different character than all of the others. While there can be similarity, topography, geography, climate, and vegetation combine to make something unique. From a POTA activator’s perspective, this uniqueness means that you must be ready to deploy antennas using a variety of different techniques. Living in Pennsylvania (Penn’s Woods) means that I am able to find a tree at almost any location where I choose to activate. This is definitely not the case in many other states.

Similarly, the number of people present in a park can bias antenna options. For example, in the highly visited National Parks, I chose to use my stealthiest antenna deployment options – consciously sacrificing gain to keep my operation invisible. I took with me, and used: several different antennas, my arborist throw-line kit, and a selection of telescoping masts. The tiny AX1 antenna gave me a very stealthy option, when needed, and it pulled in contacts like a champ.

Because most of my park activations were fit into a travel day, I tried to keep them short. I worked to get a minimum of 11 QSOs at each park, but I tried not to call QRT when there were hunters still actively trying to make contact. While the 20m band has been hit and miss for me in the past, it worked extremely well on this trip. In most cases, I completed the entire activation on 20m.

I guess I should note that my style for field operations is to keep my gear small and light, so that it can serve me in a variety of settings: from activating in the truck, to picnic table operation, to hiking to more remote sites that lack developed infrastructure. Two choices help me to meet the small and light objective. First, I operate at 5 watts or less, which enables an efficient transceiver to operate for a long time on a small, light battery. Second, I operate using CW mode, which often lets me choose small, light transceivers. CW also gives me a more effective signal at QRP power levels. With a set of earbuds, I can reduce the audio signature of my operations to practically nil. This significantly improves operational stealth.

Gear

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Elecraft KX2
SideKX end-panels and cover for the KX2
Bioenno 3 Ah LiFePO4 battery
Elecraft AX1 antenna
Elecraft AXE-1 40m antenna extender for the AX1 Antenna
ProAudio Engineering AM1-2 clamp-on antenna mount
Maxpedition Fatty organizer pouch
Tufteln EFRW antenna with 35 ft radiator and 17 ft counterpoise
Packtenna EFRW antenna with 71 ft radiator
15 ft RG316 feedline with BNC male connectors at each end
2 ft, 3 ft, and 5 ft homebrew RG316 feedline with BNC male connectors at each end
Homebrew VK3IL-designed, pressure paddles
Generic earbuds
Rite in the Rain No. 946 notepads
Pentel Twist-Erase mechanical pencil in 0.9mm
US M7 Army Light Weight Service Mask pouch: WWII vintage, canvas construction
Packtenna 10m Fiberglass Antenna Mast
Goture 6.3m Carbon Fiber Telescopic Fishing Pole
Arborist kit with 2mm Marlow Excel line and Petzel 9 oz (250g) throw bag and Tom Bihn Small Travel Tray stuff sack

More to Come

Having activated so many different POTA entities across the country during this trip, this article barely scratches the surface. Since I am not the best at remembering to take pictures during my activations, I was fortunate to have Becky along as designated photographer. With her pictures in hand, I plan to write several more field reports to give QRPer.com readers a more complete sense of the experience. Some upcoming reports will undoubtedly focus on the spectacular scenery at particular parks that we visited. Some reports will focus on antenna choices and configuration, with an eye toward antenna performance during the activations. I am honestly not yet sure what other topics may suggest themselves, so stay tuned.

One thing I can say with certainty. Even three weeks of travel through more than 20 states leaves me awed by how much more there is to be seen and done than there remains time to do it. This adventure has created resolve to do more trips like this, not only to continue our quest to activate 50 states, but to see more of the states we have already visited.

Best 73 de Brian – K3ES, XYL Becky, and POTA Dog Molly