May 31, 2012
Free Kansas State Parks Pocket Ranger® is ideal phone app for enjoying Kansas outdoors
PRATT — Just in time for summer travel season, the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism (KDWPT) has launched the Kansas State Parks Pocket Ranger® app — a free, interactive mobile guide to Kansas state parks. The Kansas State Parks Pocket Ranger® app is designed to provide information and technology to guide and enhance the state park experience and to provide added safety and enjoyment for nature lovers and outdoor enthusiasts at all of Kansas’ 26 state parks.

The Pocket Ranger® app offers interactive GPS and mapping technology for tracking trails, marking waypoints, and locating landmarks in state parks. Users are also able to locate friends within parks using the Friend Finder feature. The Alert feature supplies GPS coordinates to designated contacts in case of an emergency. Guests can also cache (store) park maps in advance, so they can still navigate if they lose mobile reception. The GeoChallenge feature offers the novice explorer or more adventurous geocacher various geoquest activities and games throughout the year to guide them on their quests.

In addition to its state-of-the-art GPS technology, the Kansas State Parks Pocket Ranger® app has other tools that make exploring state parks a breeze. Visitors can decide which park to visit using a comprehensive list of activities or search for a park within a particular region. A Calendar of Events helps visitors find upcoming events for each park. Park rules and regulations are a click away, which is especially helpful to anglers and sportsmen. Users can even reserve a campsite or cabin using the Pocket Ranger® to navigate to KDWPT’s new online cabin and campsite reservation site.

The free Kansas State Parks Pocket Ranger® app is available on the KDWPT home page at ksoutdoors.com, on iTunes, in the iPhone Apps Store, and online at PocketRanger.com and will soon be available for Android phones. Blackberry and feature phone users can use the mobile website version of the Kansas State Parks Pocket Ranger®.

The Pocket Ranger Mobile Tour Guide tutorial is available at www.youtube.com/user/PocketRangerApp. For more about Pocket Ranger®, go online to www.pocketranger.com.
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