In-car guides for Yellowstone and Grand Tetons

While driving from California to Boston a few years back, I spent a lot of time wondering what I was seeing out the window. There’s so much time to digest information on a long road trip, and I really wished for a way to soak in the cultural and natural history of the areas we passed on our way east.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I read about GaperGuides, a GPS dashboard guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The guide senses your location and plays local history, interesting stories, and fun facts through your car speakers. I imagine it’s like being on an interesting tour without having to ride in an uncomfortable bus or sit behind loud talkers who take pictures of themselves flexing their muscles in front of every scenic outlook.

The only flaw I can see from the website is that there’s only one place to pick up and drop off the device. If you’re not making a loop that starts and ends in Jackson, Wyoming, where the GaperGuide office is, you can return the unit in the mail, but you’ll have to pay the $35 daily rental fee until the postmark date and an additional $35 to cover three to five days of shipping.