Just Ahead’s newest guide leads you through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a park perfectly suited to a Just Ahead smartphone audio tour. Superb roads wind through its densely forested mountains, revealing vistas that stretch across ridge after ridge, each gently softened by the natural haze that accounts for the “smoky” in Great Smoky Mountains.
All you need to do is turn on the app and drive. As you approach the park’s sights, Just Ahead tells you exactly what you’re seeing.
Old-Fashioned Travel the New-Fashioned Way
Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona is a compact park that you could drive through, if you wanted to, in less than an hour. But with Just Ahead’s audio tour of the park loaded into your smartphone, you’ll want to spend at least half a day there, soaking in the beauty and fascinating stories of this small but amazing desert park.
NPS Photo
It’s a perfect setting for the Just Ahead formula. Sights you’d otherwise whiz by suddenly spring to life when our narration points them out, explains what you’re seeing, and urges you to hop out of the car and have a closer look.
In the course of Just Ahead’s tour of Petrified Forest National Park, you’ll learn how trees become petrified, and where to see the most stunning examples of petrified wood. You’ll explore archeological treasures such as Agate House—a building nearly 1,000 years old made entirely of petrified wood. We’ll steer you to short hikes where you can see weird badlands and odd stone formations that look like giant teepees.
Another honor has come our way! Just Ahead has been voted one of the top five new travel apps for 2015 in a USA Today Readers’ Choice poll. Just Ahead was selected as one of 20 nominees for the honor by a panel of experts that included editors from USA Today, expert contributors to the newspaper, and sources from other Gannett media outlets. (Gannett owns USA Today as well as 81 local newspapers and 43 television stations). After the nominees were announced, readers had four weeks during which to vote. When the results were announced on December 11, Just Ahead was among the top five winners.
The expert nominating panel cited Just Ahead’s ability to “transform phones into a GPS tour guide. Using GPS, the app narrates notable scenery along the way and shares info as travelers drive through certain parts of the country. They can hear stories, tips, and facts about the sights they drive past.”
The honor rounded out a year during which Just Ahead was also named Best Travel App by the North American Travel Journalists Association, and Best App in Sunset magazine’s Best of the West special section in the June issue of that magazine.
For us here at Just Ahead, the results show once again that what we’re delivering resonates with travelers. By offering audio tours of national parks and scenic highways via smartphone, we bring great destinations to life. We inform, entertain, and guide readers to rich experiences of inspiring places.
We’re proud and humbled that our product has been so warmly received!
Just Ahead’s newest smartphone audio tour is Rocky Mountain National Park, a magnificent 265,600-acre park full of mountain splendor and dramatic roads—perfectly suited to a narrated tour. The guide includes all of the park’s major paved routes as well as approaches from both the east and west. As you drive, GPS triggers narration for what you’re seeing. In other words, you come to a bend in a high mountain road and you wonder, “Wow! What’s that mountain?” That’s exactly when we tell you all about it.
This is our first guide in Colorado, and our first guide written by Mel White, highly respected author of National Geographic’s Complete National Parks of the United States.
As with all of our audio guides, once you download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play, you don’t need an Internet connection or mobile-phone signal to use it. Just turn it on, drive, and enjoy.
Just Ahead is delighted to announce an exciting partnership with Pure Adventures, a company that sets up self-guided tours in destinations all over the world.
Just Ahead audio guides will be featured on the company’s Passport to the American West trips—self-guided drive-bike and drive-hike tours that visit spectacular western national parks. Pure Adventures travelers will enjoy Just Ahead narrated tours of such parks as Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Death Valley, and Yosemite, as well as our Interstate 15 guide (Los Angeles to Utah via Las Vegas and Hoover Dam).
Just Ahead and Pure Adventures are a perfect match. Both companies help adventurous travelers get the most enjoyment and value possible from road trips in stunning locations.
The press release below has all the details.
For Immediate Release
Pure Adventures Announces Passport to the US West: Self-Guided Drive and Hike Vacations
Legendary Highways, Distinctive Lodgings, and Iconic National Parks Highlight Pre-Designed Itineraries
SCOTTSDALE, AZ, Nov. 11, 2015 – Pioneers of self-guided cycling vacations, Pure Adventures (http://pure-adventures.com/), announces a new high-end offering, Passport to the American West, one or two-week, self-drive and hike vacations focused on the 2016 Centennial Celebration of the US National Park Service.
These vacations that include a National Park pass, award-winning audio tour guides of visited parks, premier accommodation selections, a detailed road book and suggestions on the best hikes can also be customized to a client’s budget and interests.
With suggested travel during the best times to see the West, Pure Adventures recommends warm season tours from March through November. The deserts are very hot in high summer, but the mountains and canyons are cool. Peak visitors are expected in June-September. Ideal travel months are April, May, June and October.
For Immediate Release
Just Ahead’s Award-Winning Smartphone App
Ideal for Savoring Uncrowded Autumn
In America’s National Parks
LONG BEACH, CA, Oct. 29, 2015 – Just Ahead (https://www.justahead.com/), synonymous with award-winning smartphone audio tour apps for road tripping through national parks, suggests that the serenity of late autumn, when the tourist crowds are gone, can double the pleasure of exploring this country’s iconic parks and natural destinations.
The fall color in several of the parks might surprise people who think the West doesn’t have an autumn—particularly Zion, Bryce and vicinity, Grand Canyon (particularly the North Rim), Yosemite (notably, Yosemite Valley along the Merced River) and Rocky Mountain (famous for multicolored tundra and golden aspen), Just Ahead’s latest tour release.
Travelers can enjoy Just Ahead narrated audio guides for all of these parks including Utah’s Mighty Five: Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands National Parks. Autumn is also a superb season for enjoying Death Valley and Joshua Tree, also among the Just Ahead family of audio guides.
Just Ahead is known for its award-winning smartphone audio guides, but its online blog is also a trove of information for touring the national parks. Exclusive Trip Planners are available for exploring Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Death Valley, and Joshua Tree.
The detailed Trip Planners, written by Just Ahead’s team of expert travel authors, are available in Just Ahead’s blog posts. They detail the don’t-miss sights in each park, lodging and camping options, and the best times of year to visit.
If young children are along on the road trip, the National Park Service Centennial and its Every Kid in a Park promotion offers all fourth graders their own free access to the parks from now through August 31, 2016. Plus, on Veterans Day November 11, all parks will offer free admission.
“Ever wish you had your own personal tour guide when driving through US National Parks?”
The Boston Globe answered its own question yesterday by featuring Just Ahead in the paper’s Sunday travel section.
“Now you can turn your smartphone into a road trip audio guide with Just Ahead, a new app created by adventure loving travelers.”
The adventure-loving travelers at Just Ahead are delighted at the coverage. Click anywhere on the image below to see the write-up in context.
Word of Just Ahead’s revolutionary smartphone audio guides is really starting to spread. We caught the attention of the New York Times with the release of our newest guides, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and the Times writes about them in today’s In Transit blog.
Just Ahead is featured on Randy Sharman’s “The Informed Traveler” radio show on National Travel Radio. Randy conducted an eight-minute interview with Just Ahead’s editor and lead writer, Bob Howells. Click on the image below to listen.
This feature article in the Los Angeles Daily News tells the story behind Just Ahead, the smartphone app that delivers narrated audio tours of national parks and scenic highways. Click on the excerpt below to read the full article.
