6 apps for surviving the great outdoors
Sooner or later, you’re going to have to go outside, you know
The great outdoors is a place of wonder and beauty, but also a lot of questions. What’s out there in the first place, and how do we get there? Can you eat that plant? Wait, where did we park again? Relax, valiant explorer. Here are six apps to the rescue!
If you’re looking for an offline map app and travel guide all rolled into one, Pocket Earth Offline
Maps & Travel Guides (Free, Universal) is your answer. It has offline maps for regions around the world, travel guides with points of interest, hiking and cycling guides, transit directions, GPS tracking to record the routes you take, optional topographic maps… you get the idea. In-app purchases unlock certain regional maps and topographic options.
Whether you blew through your food stash with two days to go or you’re just feeling curious, you don’t have to roll the dice when sampling local vegetation.
Wild Edibles Forage ($5.99, Universal) is a guide that helps you identify, prepare, and even cultivate over 250 plants. You can filter by region and season, attach notes to a map about the plants you find, and more.
For much less than the price of hiring a professional tracker, pick up iTrack Wildlife ($14.99, Universal) to identify the local animals on your own terms. The app is packed with details, track images, and skulls of more than 70 North American species. You can search by a wide variety of criteria, and the Wikipedia pages for every animal are built in to the app for offline viewing.
Some people head to the great outdoors to get away from it all, while others still need cellular coverage for a variety of reasons. If you’re in the latter camp, check out Coverage? ($2.99, Universal). Data coverage maps for all four major North American carriers are included, and in offline format to boot. You can also slice it by LTE, 4G, 3G, and even 2G, if that works for your trip.
Is it gonna rain where you’re going? Weather Underground (Free, Universal) includes all the basics of weather monitoring, as well as hyper-local alerts for changing conditions, a webcam viewer, storm radar, historical comparisons, and lots of details like air quality and UV risk. You can also create custom forecast alerts to determine when conditions are optimal to do things like going for a hike.
Sadly, you have to head back to the real world eventually, and
Find My Car ($1.99, iPhone) is a great way to ensure you do it as painlessly as possible. You can save your car’s position based on GPS, add a photo to help jog your memory, jot down details about the space, and share it with other Find My Car users.