Helpful Apps to Use While Camping
Must-Have Camping Apps
If you’re heading out camping it’s always nice to have a few apps to help you along the way. Aside from the games to keep the kids entertained during the car ride or rainy days here are a few apps that will improve your vacation.
AllTrails – Hiking + Biking
This app is free for both Android and iOS devices. It offers more than 50000 trails that you can browse and search through. You can read reviews and look at photos posted by other users as well as add your own. There are topographic maps routes and photos. The best part? You can download a trail map for offline use and track yourself with your phone’s GPS.
MapMyHike
If you’re a MapMyFitness user you’ll be pleased to know they have an app for hiking too! Free for android and iOS this app allows you to track and log your hike including pace distance and calories. It also provides route navigation allows you to search and browse trails and download them for offline use. There are some paid elements but even the basic app is extremely useful.
Cairn
This is an excellent safety app. It logs your location and allows you to leave a trip plan with friends or family. If you’re overdue to a waypoint your contacts are alerted and given a map of your tracked locations. It also crowdsources information about where you can receive a mobile signal. This is a ‘must-have’ app if you’re planning on hiking alone or if you’re headed off the busy trails. This app is currently only available for iOS devices but there are plans to expand to other platforms soon.
LeafSnap
This is a field guide app for plant species for iOS devices (with an Android app coming soon). You can identify a plant or a tree by taking a picture of its leaves. Each entry has information about the plant or tree including pictures of its leaves bark flowers and fruit to help identification. You can browse a list of species and mark your sightings on a map.
Geocaching
In this modern-day equivalent of a treasure hunt players hide caches of small items and post the GPS coordinates for others to find. This is a great way to keep kids interested in hiking or to spice up a regular trip to the cabin. You can find a geocache by se arching near you or by keyword. You can also view recommendations and hints on caches or leave your own.
Star Walk
While this app costs $3.99 for iOS and and is free but has in-app purchases for Androids it more than earns its value. It’s an augmented reality star chart that displays the stars and planets above you providing the history and mythology of constellations stars and pl anets. You can also view the skies of the past or future. This is an awesome app no matter how old you are.
First Aid (American Red Cross)
More on the practical side this free app is for both Android and Apple. It offers lots of basic first aid information including instructions and pictures. There’s a shortcut button to dial 911 and offers information on first aid supplies and courses. This is a great app to have because even if you’re careful bad things can happen.