With paddling in Yellowstone still facing an upstream battle, National Parks Traveler, the top-ranked website dedicated to daily editorial coverage of the national parks, recently introduced the first comprehensive guide dedicated to paddling the parks.
“With more than 400 units in our National Park System, how do you choose where to wet your paddle?” asks Kurt Repanshek, National Parks Traveler founder and editor-in-chief. “With our Essential Guide to Paddling The Parks we’ve made the decision-process easy.”
This 54-page, full-color guide offers a park-by-park directory of nearly 100 units where paddling by canoe, kayak or raft is an integral activity. Along with details on where to paddle in the park system, this guide includes gear lists and reviews, book reviews, and insider information on paddling destinations.
The guide also offers capsules of more than two dozen paddle-friendly parks and includes features on what limited paddling there currently is in Yellowstone, as well as options in the Everglades, Voyageurs, Grand Canyon, Canyonlands and Channel Islands national parks, as well as within Dinosaur National Monument and down the Buffalo National River.
The directory of park units to paddle is alphabetical, includes only those parks where paddling is approved and provides short capsules on the type of paddling experience. Accompanying hot links take you to a park’s paddling web page and to a list of approved outfitters.
A section of the guide is devoted to the work being done by the National Parks Conservation Association to see our national park waterways remain clean and healthy.
“One of the great aspects of our national parks is there are many ways to experience them,” adds Repanshek. “This guide provides options ranging from a relaxing paddle in a kayak or canoe on still water to a roller coaster, white water rafting trip for experienced adrenaline junkies.”
The guide follows the recent introduction of National Parks Traveler’s Parkipedia, an online publication modeled after Wikipedia which takes a crowd-sourcing approach to guidebook creation.
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