What an exciting year to be a national park lover!
For all of us at Chimani, it’s been a whirlwind of excitement celebrating this year’s 100th birthday of the National Park Service. From attending the Centennial season kickoff/Junior Ranger Day at Acadia National Park to launching free individual national park mobile app travel guides for all 59 US national parks.
Yes, we more than doubled the number of national park apps in our collection, and sure, we got to visit dozens of spectacular parks along the way, but it was YOU, our users that made it all possible!
Our team visited Acadia, Arches, Biscayne, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Death Valley, Dry Tortugas, Everglades, Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Petrified Forest, Saguaro, and Zion, working with ranger and nonprofits to make our apps as accurate as possible.
We saw the creation of new national park units, including Mojave Trails National Monument, Sand to Snow National Monument, and Castle Mountains National Monument in Southern California, the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Washington, D.C. , the Stonewall National Monument in NYC, and the Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument in Northern Maine.
Visitation was a hot topic this year, as it’s predicted that by year’s end, 330 million people will have visited the national parks this year, beating last year’s record of 307 million.
Yes, it certainly has been a wonderful year for the national parks and we can’t wait to get back out there and do it all again in 2017.
Happy Holidays and New Year from the team at Chimani!
P.S. Don’t forget to start planning your next national park trip with our free national park apps!
