Posts tagged state parks
Writing Contests: East Coast Sandwiches and West Coast State Parks + Deep Thoughts
Thanks to all who downloaded our iPhone app! We’re now working like crazy on the next big thing. It’s going to be much more participative every step of the way. Here’s what we’re thinking:
- The check-in market is cornered. The world doesn’t need another Foursquare clone.
- Unedited reviews: Sometimes useful, often faked or spammy, almost always demoralizing to wade through. See TripAdvisor or Yelp’s four stars and a rant.
- Guidebooks/newspaper travel sections: Based on an antiquated, elitist model that relies on a handful of people (often just passing through or relaying hearsay) to cover a huge geographic space. Prone to obsolescence, inaccuracies, shilling, and sameness.
We want to collect the experiences that drive people to check places out and report back on them. To put it succinctly:
People + Places + Love
A place will only appear on Trazzler if:
- our editors scouted it out and loved it.
- a person scouted it out and loved it and our editors agreed.
- a person scouted it out and loved it—our editors disagreed, but smart people convinced them they were wrong.
- an expert (like a tourism bureau or local blogger) suggested it and our editors agreed.
Frankly, most places won’t make the cut. Instead of listing every place in the big wide world and waiting for people to check in, we want you to send you on assignment to check places out. Instead of interacting with a chosen few, our editors work with everyone, devising creative contests that feature places we care about—and reward the people who love a place enough to capture its essence in photos or words.
Here are two contests that are happening right now (soon there will be more all over the world that you can enter right from your phone or Trazzler.com):
East Coast Local Institutions: Sandwich Edition: Writing Assignment—$250 Contract + a Free Philly Hoagie Getaway
West Coast Endangered Places Contest: California State Park Edition—Writing Assignment: $500 Contract
Deadline for entry: November 30.
Exploring America’s State Parks
Photographer: Mike Nielsen»>Go to Slideshow: State Parks
America’s 58 national parks are expansive and glamorous, gracing calendars and inspiring countless cross-country road trips. In their shadow, over 3,675 state parks carry on in relative obscurity, hiding an almost unbelievable variety of landscapes, ecosystems, and wildlife habitats. The masses mostly head to the big-name parks, leaving these smaller state alternatives on the fringes, often without another soul in sight.
During this particular economic crisis, the future (and funding) of state parks looks as precarious as that of the wildlife they harbor. As cities sprawl into megalopolises, even during tough economic times, it seems short-sighted to abandon the few unspoiled places that remain—especially considering that America’s system of parks was developed by forward-thinking leaders during even rougher patches. In the midst of the Civil War, in 1864, a vocal group of advocates convinced Abraham Lincoln to set aside the land of Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias for the state of California. And the well-conceived parks infrastructure that we take for granted today was a product of the Civilian Conservation Corps program of the 1930s.
Given the embarrassment of riches that America enjoys (our parks make up 10% of the protected land in the world), it wasn’t easy to narrow it down to sixteen. In addition to the slideshow above, you can read about many more state parks here: State Parks Close to You
