Anywhere you go can become a lesson.
There’s no list of “approved” places. A national park, a county historical society, a friend’s ranch and a marker at the end of a gravel road can all become a great lesson. The only difference is how much outside information about each one we can keep on your phone.
What’s built in, and what you add
| Kind | What it is | What we keep | No signal? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built in | Every National Park Service site — parks, monuments, battlefields, seashores and historic sites — and the historic places on the National Register. | Name, kind, location and, for historic places, their story and a link to the marker. | Along your trip, yes — once a trip has been opened with signal, its list of places and their lessons stay on the phone. |
| Added by you | Everything else. The small-town museum, the creek at the gorge, grandma’s farm, the county historical society. | Only what’s yours — the name you typed, where it is, your notes and the lesson we wrote for it. | The lesson works offline. Saving the place and writing the lesson need signal. |
| Coming | State parks, campgrounds on Recreation.gov, museums and science centers. | Public information we’re free to keep on your phone. | Not built yet. |
Why the lessons work with no signal
The lessons are ours, not a map company’s. A field-trip plan — the goals, the scavenger hunt, the questions, the different part for each of your children — is something we made, so we can keep it on your phone. The same goes for anything you type or photograph.
There’s no map drawn inside the app yet. Directions open in the maps app you already use, which can keep its own offline maps.
Three ways to find a stop, and the third matters most.
Near you
Your places, nearest first, with one tap for directions. Historic places near you come with their story, and the phone can let you know as you drive past one.
Along your trip
Bring in your route and see every national park site within reach of it, with how far off the road it is and which day of the trip it falls on.
Just add it
Type a name and use where you’re standing, an address, or a pasted Google Maps link. Pick which children are coming and how long you have, and a lesson is written for each of them.
Your places are yours to keep
Once your family has made lessons somewhere, that record — your lessons, photos and notes — belongs to your family for good. If you’d like, you can offer a lesson to other families. Nothing leaves your family until a real person has reviewed it, and then only the lesson goes: never your family, your children, their photos or the place’s exact location.
Bring the trip you already planned.
Bring in a trip from RV LIFE Trip Wizard, Roadtrippers, Furkot, Garmin or any app that saves a GPX, KML or CSV file, paste a Google Maps directions link, or add stops by hand. Bring the same trip in again after you change it and you see just what changed — “one added, two moved” — not a second copy. The trip lays out day by day, with a lesson for each coming day written for where you’ll be.
- Places along the way. Every national park site within reach of the route, and how far off the road each one is.
- Weather where you’ll be. The forecast for each day’s stop, on the trip, on Today and in the lessons themselves.
- Road Moments. Turn them on for a trip, and the phone offers a two-minute moment as you near a place on the route. Where you are is worked out on the phone and never sent or stored.
- Junior Ranger and passes. The badges and park passes your family has, kept in one place.
Still to come: ranking stops by nap time, RV parking, the passes you hold and the subjects your children need most, and the Park Service’s own ranger-talk times and fees.
Get ready before you lose signal
One button on the trip: for every coming day, it fills in any missing lessons and saves the day to your phone — the plan, every lesson, the routines and the grown-ups’ busy times — and tells you which days are ready. That one step is what makes camping off the grid actually work.
Public records cover the parks. They don’t cover the good stops.
Public records give us every national park site and the historic places on the National Register. What no record has is the mining museum with the volunteer who lets kids hold the ore, the pull-off where the fossils are, or which visitor center has a changing table. That comes from families, and it’s the one thing we can’t build alone.
Beta families share the places they actually stop at — a name, a pin, what worked for which ages, and a tip for the next family. That library is what will make the app worth paying for later, and the families who build it should never pay more than the ones who come after.