Explore California’s state parks with this new augmented-reality app

Some people head out into the wilderness to disconnect from technology and modern life. For others, well, there’s this new thing – an app that guides you around California’s state parks using augmented reality on your phone.

Virtual Adventurer is a free app from TimeLooper that’s meant to enhance your visit to a state park while you’re actually there — with historic stories read by voice actors, holograms, 3-D reconstructions and various AR bells and whistles. (You can find it on the App Store.) Right now it’s loaded with packages for nine parks, including three within striking distance of the Bay Area: Jack London State Historic Park, Point Lobos State Natural Reserve and, a bit further afield, Bodie State Historic Park.

“We’re excited to launch the Virtual Adventurer app that further provides opportunities for Californians to access the cultural, historic and natural resources found across our beautiful state,” California State Parks Director Armando Quintero says in a statement. “The app also supports and enhances the department’s Reexamining Our Past Initiative by developing content for parks that tells a more complete, accurate and inclusive history of people and places.”

Once you download the app, you can install guides for your preferred park and take them for a spin once you’re there. At Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, for example, you’re led around by an Afro-Latina traveler with the late-1700s Juan Bautista De Anza expedition. At the Bodie historic park, you get to see the birth of a Chinese-American community in an 1800s mining town. Jack London park’s namesake author, meanwhile, informs you his “truest passion is not writing – that just pays the bills. My greatest passion is farming.” The actor playing London then goes into green agriculture and interesting structures in the park, including the “House of Happy Walls” and the wonderfully named “Pig Palace.”

The app allows you to place and examine AR artifacts in locations throughout the parks. It’s also quite accessible, with audio captioning and high-contrast and dyslexic font options. Here’s the full list of participating parks; more are scheduled to arrive soon:

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Bodie State Historic Park

Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park

Jack London State Historic Park

Montaña de Oro State Park

Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (Oso Flaco Lake)

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park

Point Lobos State Natural Reserve

Sue-meg State Park