Apps for Exploring Rhode Island

It's the 21st century and so we have apps for everything. Rhode Island State Parks have a great app that provides a calendar, descriptions of state parks, maps, campgrounds, beaches, and management areas, and lots more. It's free, and is available for all kinds of phones. Very handy for making your own outdoor excursions.  The Official Guide for Rhode Island State Parks is part of the Pocket Ranger system. 

They aren't exactly apps, but there are several other mobile phone services are available for Rhode Island outdoors lovers. You may be able to read this article that was in the June 24th Providence Journal, Tap into Rhode Island's Natural Beauty with Smartphone Tours. Subscribers certainly can read it. The article described how we can call a number or scan a QR code to learn more about where we are. The Newport Historical Society has a free app for exploring that city's historical treasures. You put in this web address, and then you can add the app to your phone. Audubon Society of RI has a QR code to use at the Maxwell Mays Refuge, and theyre working on other aids. In Providence, it's worth exploring a hidden treasure with those QR codes behind the Ocean State Job Lot on Reservoir Avenue ~ Mashapaug Pond. I can't find an online reference to this self-guided tour today, but you can read about the pond at the Urban Pond Procession's website. There are signs and brochures that explain this when you arrive at the pond behind Job Lot. Colonial tree Walks is another app that you can download is from the Newport Tree Society -- Newport is not only famous for "cottages," tennis, sailing, and folk festivals, but also for its magnificent trees. It's so impressive that the city has recently begun thinking of itself as an arboretum.

For the determinedly low-tech ones among us, there's a paper Passport to the Trails you can request from Audubon. 

Enjoy Rhode Island out there this summer!