In a move the Obama administration believes will make the reservation of activities on public lands easier, a makeover has been made to the reservations portal, recreation.gov.
The redesign includes improved navigation controls and expanded content on the interagency website that guides visitors to 90,000 sites on federal lands, such as national parks, wildlife refuges, waterways, forests and recreation areas.
In a press release Monday, Interior Department officials said the redesign of www.recreation.gov "is an initial step in a multi-year strategy to engage visitors with enhanced interactive content and more multimedia, mobile, trip-planning tools. The seven million visitors who use the web site every year will be able to make reservations, see ready-made itineraries for destination cities, and search for activities on an interactive map."
“Tourism and outdoor recreation are powerful economic engines in communities across the country,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said. “With the redesign of Recreation.Gov, we are making it easier for people to plan trips, find outdoor adventures, and explore activities at our public lands across the country.”
“Outdoor activities contribute an estimated $646 billion to the U.S. economy, according to independent estimates, and this enhanced website will provide a gateway for Americans to enjoy their great outdoors,” added Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
"Recreation.gov is a ‘one-stop’ website to find places that close to home for a day's fishing, boating, swimming, hiking, and much more. There are so many sites within a short drive of urban areas that people don't know about,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy said. “At Recreation.gov people can find parks, swimming beaches, boat ramps, and other places to get away to for a few hours, days, or weeks."
Highlights of the updated site include:
Explore Trip Ideas: Recreation.gov now features Explore Trip Ideas with interactive maps to help visitors discover points-of-interest on public lands when planning trips to popular destination cities like Atlanta, Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and more.
Go Lists: Created to encourage more people to get active outdoors, Go Lists provide highlights of places to go, events, and activities at federal sites across the country with topics including “Day Hikes for Weekend Warriors” and “Civil War 150th Anniversary: Places and Events that Shaped Our Nation.”
Discover Great American Adventures: More in-depth articles and destination spotlights can be found in Discover Great American Adventures, which feature a wide variety of experiences and adventures found only in America.
The Recreation.gov website update is a joint initiative between federal agency partners – including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Comments
I have had just a few opportunities to use Recreation.gov, but based on those experiences, I'll give it two thumbs up. And if I had more thumbs, I'd give it more.
It's easy to use and the knowledge that I'll actually have a place to lay my head in a campground makes traveling to our parks even more enjoyable. I visit parks for rest and relaxation and the idea of having to race or get into a duel with someone to snag a campsite is as stressful as trying to find a reasonably priced place to park in Salt Lake City.
If these things will actually improve it, then wonderful. But I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of ways it could be improved over what it already is. Someone has done a fine job setting this thing up.
So, whoever you are --- Thanks!
I hope you are planning to make meaninful changes to this site ... because it functions poorly.
There are no explanations of rules/instructions of how the Res.gov site uses calander timing, when future reservation begins at any given site, what sites are first come first serve and so on to assit a person in booking time within the system. You can spend hours looking for a campsite only to find nothing available.
It is very dificult to actulally reserve anything... no matter how far in advance (or how short) everything is always booked up solid or too far in the future. Then after finaly getting "any place" reserved only to find that nearby sites shown as reserverd sat empty all weekend
The hosts tell of, dealing with the Government abyss, stange timing rules and delays, the process of campers reserving everything they can to lock up sites then cancelling everthing they don't want later, and how little control the host actually have anymore.
DO this...
- MAKE IT ACCESABLE TO BOOK DATES FURTHER IN ADVANCE.
- POST A SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND, CLEARLY EXPLAINED SET OF RULES THAT GOVERN AND EXPLAIN THE COMPUTER PROCESS THAT IS USED BY THE SITE.
- CLEARLY DEFINE THE CORELATION OF THE FIRST DATE THAT A FUTURE DATE CAN BE RESERVED, (so i know when to attempt the reservation of the site I want)
MAKE CANCELATIONS REAL TIME FOR BETTER AVAILABLITY
BETTER YET, HELP THE ON SITE HOST MANAGE THE SITE CALANDER WITH OVERRIDE ABILITY
BETTER, BETTER YET, PUT THE MONEY INTO RENOVATING EXISTING CAMPGROUNDS AND BUILDING NEW ONES
THE BEST PLAN !
STOP FORCING ME TO RELY ON A ONE SIZE FITS ALL NATIONAL COMPUTER PROGRAM TO MANAGE AND LIMIT MY RECREATION ACTIVITIES.