Whenever I talk with someone about going to visit a National Park these days I always recommend that they check and see if there is Chimani smartphone app available for where they are visiting. Chimani apps have been extremely helpful to us in the last year while visiting the Grand Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands National Parks.

Yesterday (June 1st, 2016) Chimani released apps for the parks that they had not completed yet, meaning that there is now a Chimani app to guide you through each of the U.S. National Parks. This is an impressive feat and the folks over at Chimani asked us here at Yellow Van Travels to help get the word out about it.

Chimani was only able to produce these apps so quickly because of generous support from Subaru of America. Now I have never had a Subaru, so I can’t speak to what kind of cars they are, but I can say this is a worthy cause for them to invest resources into.

I have not looked at all 59 of the apps that Chimani has for National Parks, but the ones I have looked at all appear to run very similarly. This is great because it means you only have to get use to the interface once and then as you travel across America to the different parks it will remain mostly consistent, although some parks will have different features or categories depending on what the park has available.

One of the biggest advantages of Chimani apps is that they can be used without an internet connection as long as you download the map data before leaving the internet. This is extremely helpful since, as you adventures know, cell service in the parks is almost always spotty at best.

Another big reason these apps have been developed is to try and reduce waste in National Parks. The paper guides that the parks have traditionally given out often end up in landfills, or worse as litter. Some parks, like the Grand Canyon, have even stopped giving guides out recently. So be sure before you go to a National Park that you download the corresponding Chimani app and get the correct data downloaded on it, then you can make your trip a little easier, give the environment a little boost, and have yourself an adventure.