We here at Just Ahead are excited to announce the launch of our first iPhone-powered GPS audio tour. Our debut guide takes you on a professionally narrated audio tour of Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. It’s available for download now in the Apple App Store, and an Android version is coming soon.
Maybe we’re a little biased, but we love how the app works: Once you download it, you simply open the app, and we begin guiding you to and through Joshua Tree National Park. We point out landmarks along the way, and all the coolest places to visit.
By the way: Just Ahead’s Joshua Tree is a GPS audio tour. In other words, you don’t need a mobile phone signal or an Internet connection. The app uses GPS to know exactly where you are in the park. It even knows what direction you’re traveling.
Once you start the tour, a friendly, informative tour guide begins narrating your travels.
Joshua Tree has more than 800,000 acres of wild desert, rugged mountain ranges, and massive boulder formations. And, of course, the signature Joshua tree, hearty symbol of the Mojave Desert. It’s huge, and a bit mysterious. That’s part of its appeal.
And it’s a place that’s super close to my heart. I’m a fifth-generation native of the High Desert, and though I don’t live there full time, I go out as often as I can to climb, to play on boulders, to hike among desert wildflowers, to explore old mining ruins, to camp, to stargaze, and to reconnect with blue skies and spacious surroundings.
And sometimes just to take a road trip. Joshua Tree has 89 miles of paved roads and 90 miles of maintained dirt roads that wind through the high desert, skirt the mountains, circle among the great boulders, and drop down to the low desert.
We guarantee it: As soon as you bury your nose in a map or guide, a bighorn sheep will strike a pose atop a boulder, then slip away as soon as you look up.
Every mile offers something to see. But to be constantly consulting maps and guidebooks is not the way to see Joshua Tree. We guarantee it: As soon as you pull over to bury your nose in a map or guide, a desert tortoise will dart (heh) behind a creosote bush, or a bighorn sheep will strike a pose atop a boulder, then slip away as soon as you look up.
With Just Ahead, you’re always looking up.
You keep your eyes on the scenery—the Wonderland of Rocks, Hidden Valley, Lost Horse Valley, Indian Cove, Pinto Basin—and we tell you what you’re seeing. And suggest the best places to get out and explore.
Know where to take the kids on a short nature walk? Where to find some of California’s most vivid petroglyphs? What an early 20th-century gold mine looks like? Have you heard about the erstwhile Swedish sailor who spent his later years carving mystifying inscriptions into granite boulders?
Joshua Tree is full of stories to hear and legendary sights to see. We’re passionate about Joshua Tree and infatuated with our national parks. We’re delighted to accompany you to one of our favorites.
Click here to visit the iTunes store and download Just Ahead.