Credit: King County Parks
I recently posted about two online map tools to help with park outing planning, and one of them was King County iMaps. Now King County iMaps has a new version specifically for parks.
King County has 200 public parks and natural areas and 175 miles of trails in its system. They range from typical playgrounds and ballfields to large tracts of forest and wetland. There’s even a campground (including yurts) at Tolt-MacDonald Park.
If you’ve been wanting to explore new places or get away from it all, the King County ParkFinder is a great way to get ideas on where to go without having to take a long trip.
When you first load the page you’ll see a map of King County with green squares marking the parks and natural areas. There’s also a box that allows you search by amenities, parks and natural areas, or trails. If you click on the little italics i in the upper right corner you’ll get tips on using ParkFinder.
When you click on a green square you get a popup with brief info about the location and an option to zoom in. Zooming in will automatically take you to a close view of that location. If you click on the four square icon on the menu bar you can switch to an aerial view map. (The aerial views are from 2013, so will be outdated for any recently renovated parks.)
The one glaring lack is there are no direct links to the individual location pages on the King County Parks website. So if you want details about a place you will need to click on the King County Parks Home link at the top and then click on the search icon in the upper right corner and type in the park’s name.
I am adding a permanent link to King County ParkFinder in the links section of this blog. But you can also go to the website now and bookmark it for future reference.
p.s. I know I have at least one blog reader who is an avid kayaker. So I’ll take this opportunity to mention that there are six new kayak accessible campsites at the Maury Island Marine Park (a King County park) on Vashon Island. It’s also available to hike-in campers via a 3/4 mile trail. You can read about it here.
Park Preview 