Recently PBS aired The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The series has inspired this sequence of blog postings about aspects of my personal park explorations over the years. I’m using ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) in the investigation. See other national park blog posts for more (including details on performing some functions listed below).

We’re moving through my Fav 7. Today, Redwood…the last stop. In exploring my other top parks, a theme rings out—geology and related threads. In a trip to this park, the geologic setting is very much evident but in my view, it’s impossible to not be humbled to silence and awe not by the landscape, but what’s on it—living things, the Redwoods. These trees, Sequoia sempervirens, represent the tallest and are among the longest and oldest living entities on planet Earth…and they only live in one place—along the US Pacific Coast from southern Oregon to Big Sur, California. In preparing for this entry, I did a bit of Web research on the trees, the park(s), and aspects such as the importance of fog as a key part of the overall water supply for the trees. Also, I was excited to see that the redwoods (range, threats, sustainability, history) were the October 2009 cover story of National Geographic magazine.

Using AGX, I do several things I’ve not covered in this series so far: Download and add a park boundary shape file from the National Park Service Data Clearinghouse (NOTE: Not all NPS data are ready for immediate direct use by AGX), plan a trip to a few key park sites, and check the weather for our trip.

To start, I create a Redwood folder for content (layers, Web research, views). Next, I add the NPS Klamath area parks boundary file and zoom to the Redwood NP extent. Where to go next?

A great place to stay in Crescent City, CA is the Hampton Inn. Using its address and ZIP (100 A St, 95531), I locate and add it to my map. The places I want to visit include the Hiouchi Information Center, the Stout Grove (by way of the Howland Hill Scenic Road), and the Klamath River Overlook. I use the Notes feature to pinpoint the places I want to explore.

Using the AGX Route function, I add the route sequence and execute the multistop route and derive a useable map for my day’s travels.

What’s the day’s weather like for the Redwoods? Check out the AGX Weather Forecast Add-in.

Stay tuned for the final installment in this series.

- George Dailey, ESRI Education Program Manager