Parks Manager features
Parks Manager features cover getting a campsite after it sells out, building the trip, and staying in touch while you are out there.
They also cover keeping a record of where you have been, and using the other apps you already carry.
How-to pages walk the real buttons: emergency contacts, trail check-ins, crew invites, campground watches, packing lists, and the scratch map.
Each page gives the real mechanics — how often something is checked, what the caps are, where the data comes from — and ends with what the feature does not do.
Parks Manager is free. Signing in is an email address and the six-digit code sent to it, and a new board starts empty, with no sample trip and no park scratched on your behalf.
- 20features documented here
- Freeno paid tier
- Email and a codehow you sign in
- Emptyhow a new board starts
Getting a spot after it sells out
Recreation.gov shows a campground as full long before the trip is impossible. These two features are about the supply that opens up afterwards.
- Campsite and permit alerts
Watch a Recreation.gov facility for the nights you want and get emailed when a cancellation appears.
- Campground bathroom reports
A 1-to-5 rating, tagged problems, and the toilet kind that was actually there — separately for bathrooms, water, and showers.
Building the trip
The drive order, the gear, and the people you are going with. All three live on the same trip and can be edited by anyone you share the board with.
- Trip routes
Order up to 60 stops and get a real routed distance and time on every leg, with the estimate labelled when it is one.
- Packing lists
A 29-item suggested list you opt into, copied only after you accept items, with a private list per person.
- Crew boards
Share a board with up to eight people across three roles, and settle competing edits with a vote instead of a last-write-wins overwrite.
Once you are out there
What Parks Manager sends while a trip is running: closures, forecasts, dark-sky windows, and the check-in someone at home is waiting on.
- Emergency contacts and check-ins
A read-only itinerary link for someone at home, GPS check-ins from the trail, and an email asking them to confirm you got back.
- Weather and park conditions
Forecast, park closures, and severe-weather warnings for the parks on a trip, pushed by email before they matter.
- Night sky planning
Milky Way core windows, moon brightness, and meteor shower peaks for each night of a trip, computed on the device.
Keeping the record
Where you have already been, and what it took to get there.
- Scratch-off park map
245 parks across eight countries under a foil layer, with a separate board for you and for each crew you share with.
The apps you already carry
Merlin, the National Park Service, Recreation.gov, the shipped state reservation desks, and the map on your phone each do one job. The trip those jobs hang off is Parks Manager.
- Merlin Bird ID
Phones open Merlin. On a park page, Open Merlin opens Explore at that park, and Sound ID is on the trip.
- National Park Service
Public NPS feeds on the parks you add. The agency app and nps.gov stay the official channel.
- Recreation.gov
The trip and the watch live here. Booking, payment, and lotteries stay on Recreation.gov.
- State parks
State catalogs pin on a trip. Kentucky, Minnesota, and Texas match an agency count.
- Google and Apple Maps
The stop list stays here. Google Maps gets the drive run. Apple Maps gets the ends, and each hop.
How to turn a feature on
The real buttons and labels, in order. These pages answer “how do I set this up,” not “what does the product do.”
- Set up an emergency contact
Add a trusted email on a saved trip and choose whether they get a link or an email.
- Start trail check-ins
Send coarse GPS from the trail to the people already on the trip as emergency contacts.
- Invite someone to a crew
Email an accept link. They are not on the board until they sign in with that mailbox.
- Watch a campground opening
Name one facility and the nights you want. Parks Manager emails a book link. It never pays.
- Add a packing list
New trips start empty. Add stock items one at a time, or build the list on that trip.
- Scratch a visited park
Peel foil on a country map. A new board has nothing scratched until you tap a park.
Research pages that need no account
Two other parts of this site are public and need no sign-in: a planning guide for every park tracked here, and a way to find which parks are within reach of a given town.
- National park planning guides
How campsite releases, permit lotteries, and timed entry work, plus a guide for each park in the catalog.
- Explore parks by place
Which national parks are near a town, with distances, drive-time bands, and what has to be booked ahead.