Eleven (11?!) new pages

In case you thought I’ve been sitting around twiddling my thumbs… here are eleven new pages I’ve created over the last few weeks! That brings me up to 126 national park map pages created. I realize it’s been a couple months since I’ve written an update here, but I find that when I have some available time to work on this site, I’d rather upload new maps and create new pages rather than just telling you what I’ve done. So now I’ve finally found the time to tell you. Here are the new pages:

Golden Gate map (south)You’ll find 31 maps on the Golden Gate maps page. I’d been putting this one off for a while, as I knew it’d be a heavy lift. Previous I had created pages for Alcatraz and Muir Woods — both parts of Golden Gate — but decided it was high time I got the rest of the park finished too.

Jean Lafitte mapI was very pleased to finally get a Louisiana park on the board: Jean Lafitte National Preserve. You can find 10 Jean Lafitte maps on my page so far, including one I think is one of the best-looking of any park map.

Big Cypress National Preserve mapSouth Florida is pretty much all parkland. Finally, I’ve got 12 Big Cypress maps completed, so Big Cypress National Preserve now gets a place of honor alongside side Everglades, Biscayne, and Dry Tortugas.

Colorado National Monument mapThere’s a weird little quirk about my new Colorado National Monument maps page that probably only I will ever care about. Can you figure it out? There’s something I had to do here that I haven’t on any other page, due to a funny issue with the park.

Soldiers National Cemetery mapI realize I’m still lacking on Civil War sites. Sure, I’ve got Harpers Ferry, Vicksburg, and Kennesaw Mountain, but now I’ve got a page up for the most visited of them all: Gettysburg maps.

Tallgrass Prairie mapYay, Kansas! I hadn’t forgotten you. Now you can go back in time and imagine what the Great Plains used to look like after getting some Tallgrass Prairie maps for your visit.

New River Gorge mapI was also happy to get West Virginia another page, especially since Harpers Ferry is barely even in West Virginia. Now here’s a park to be very proud of: New River Gorge maps.

Gila Cliff Dwellings mapTraveling back out west, we find New Mexico’s embarrassment of riches. Gila Cliff Dwellings maps is already my fourth New Mexico page, with several more still to come!

Wupatki mapThen you have Arizona showing up even New Mexico, as Wupatki maps is my seventh park page in the state of Arizona. You could do an entire vacation of visiting only Arizona national parks… but I don’t recommend it because they really work best visiting in different seasons.

Sunset Crater mapNext door to Wupatki you’ve got Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. So I couldn’t do Wupatki without getting a Sunset Crater maps page up. But what about nearby Walnut Canyon? (Coming soon.)

Great Falls mapAnd back east again, Great Falls maps. Here’s a fun bit of trivia: although Great Falls Park is in Virginia, Great Falls is in Maryland. Oddly, the Maryland/Virginia border is not the middle of the Potomac River, as is traditional with boundaries. Instead, the entire Potomac here belongs to Maryland. Therefore, even though all of Great Falls Park is in Virginia, visitors go there to look at something that’s entirely in Maryland.

Over 200 new maps!

Since my last update post about six weeks ago, I’ve added a grand total of…… one new park page. That doesn’t seem like much. But that’s because I’ve been busy hard at work adding over 200 new maps to parks I’ve previously created pages for. That’s right – I don’t just put up a page once and consider it finished; I continually add more and more maps to each page as I discover additional maps.

So clearly, there’s way too many updates for me to list here, as the majority of my map pages have been updated with new ones. In particular, you’ll find a ton of new geologic maps, for those like me who geek out on geology. I’m now at 1,454 maps and looking forward to crossing the 1,500 milestone soon.

Manzanar map previewSo, what’s the single new page? One of the most important and relevant park sites for today’s world: Manzanar National Historic Site, an internment camp where Japanese-Americans were sent during Word War II. Check out the eight maps I’ve got on the Manzanar Maps page to plan your visit soon and make sure nothing like this ever happens again in the United States.

Happy new year! Some page updates

Happy 2017, everyone! I started this site just over three years ago now, and am pretty pleased with how things have progressed. Three years ago on this date, I had all of 261 maps on 27 pages. Today I have 1,249 maps on 114 park pages. Sure, you could argue that I should have much more than that considering all the time that’s passed since then, but I’ve moved a few times, changed jobs, and had a relatively busy personal life. Cut me some slack! 🙂 This site will probably never be paying my bills, so it’ll remain just a free-time project for me. OK, new updates:

Timpanogos Cave trail mapRainbow Bridge Maps and Timpanogos Cave Maps are both live – two national monuments that tend to not get too much visitation. They’re pretty much at the opposite ends of the accessibility spectrum as well – Timpanogos Cave is right off the highway just outside the Salt Lake City metro area, while Rainbow Bridge can only be realistically visited by boat from Lake Powell.

Exit Glacier aerial mapI’ve also added new maps from a bunch of park wayside exhibits: you’ll find some battle maps on the Harpers Ferry Maps page, new trail maps on Everglades Maps,  trail maps of Giant Forest on Sequoia Maps, trail and geological maps on Lassen Volcanic Maps, Exit Glacier maps on Kenai Fjords Maps, Lassen Bumpass Hell mapand aerial photography maps on Cape Lookout Maps. Additionally, you’ll find a couple extra random ones I uncovered on park websites: a map showing ancient Lake Florissant on Florissant Fossil Beds Maps, and Yosemite picnic areas on Yosemite Maps.

Whew. See, I haven’t just been sitting around doing nothing!

 

A few new parks

I hope everyone’s been having a good winter holiday season so far! I’m happy to report that I’ve created a few new pages, putting me over 1,200 maps for the first time.

Organ Pipe precipitation mapAlthough it’s not a heavily-visited park — it’s way down on the Mexican border in Arizona — I dug up 11 maps for the Organ Pipe Cactus maps page. Although I wouldn’t recommend a summer visit, the desert can be beautiful in the spring!

Hovenweep National Monument mapI unfortunately don’t have much yet for Hovenweep maps, but I’m hoping I’ll have more soon. There are some incredible parks in this part of the country for those fascinated by human stories – stay tuned for more pages soon.

National Mall mapThe National Mall maps page was a bit tricky, as I couldn’t decide whether to also include parks that are also nearby the Mall even if they’re managed as a separate park unit. In the end, I decided to keep parks like President’s Park (The White House) on separate pages, but with links back and forth for easy access.

3D White House mapWhite House maps gets its own page since I was able to dig up enough different maps that I didn’t want to clog up the National Mall maps page. Technically this should be called “President’s Park maps,” but how many people out there know that President’s Park is the official name for the White House park grounds? For clarity, I decided White House Maps worked much better.

A bunch of small updates

First, I’m sorry the updates have gotten a bit slow lately – it’s summer! I’m not fancy enough to make my living off the web, so I work a regular full-time job and put in time on this site when I have free time. So when the weather is nice and it’s hiking and camping season, I’m outside soaking up the mountains and sun rather than sitting on my laptop on the couch. I hope you understand! (If you’re reading this site, there’s a good chance you’re same way.)

Anyway, I just wanted to let you in on a number of small updates I’ve done recently:

Lassen Butte Lake Campground mapI replaced the campground maps on the Lassen Volcanic maps page – the new ones are much clearer and higher quality, making it easier to find your campsite of choice.

Death Valley National Park mapI uploaded a couple new full-park Death Valley maps that are better looking than the previous ones and have been revised in the last few months. Check them out – they’re the first two maps listed on the page.

Canyonlands terrain mapI uploaded some beautiful terrain maps to the Glacier maps and Canyonlands maps pages. They’re not as useful for navigation, but they look so nice and I can’t help staring at them and plotting trips.

Yosemite panorama mapI added some amazing looking Heinrich Berann map paintings to a few parks: Yosemite, Yellowstone, North Cascades, and Denali. Again, like the terrain maps above, they’re not meant to be printed and taken with you in the car; instead they’re better for getting a visual perspective of what the parks are like.

Again, I appreciate your patience; once the summer starts wrapping up and the weather cools down, expect more substantial updates to come!