WHITNEY ROYSTER Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Monday, August 6, 2007 12:00 am
MOOSE - At Menor's Ferry on a rainy afternoon, a handful of people waited to take the old-time boat across the Snake River.
They marveled at the scenery, with the Tetons popping through the clouds. They did not, however, partake of a self-guided tour of the park, offered now through a cell phone.
The reason? The tour is so new, none of them knew about it. Grand Teton National Park officials hope to change that.
Park visitors can call a number on their cell phones and listen to a guided tour - learning about things such as early homesteaders, park geology, how Grand Teton became a park, and Menor's Ferry, which once was the area's only way to cross the Snake River. There are six two- to three-minute messages.
Visitors can find the tour - and an accompanying map - at any visitors center or at Menor's Ferry, behind the existing Moose Visitors Center. It takes about 30 minutes to complete.
"We wanted to stay relevant to park visitors," said Julena Campbell, public affairs specialist for Grand Teton. "Parks are experiencing a decline in visitation. This is a way to stay relevant, on the cutting edge, and involve kids. We thought this would be a cool way to kind of reel people in."
Visitation in Grand Teton has hovered around 4 million people annually in recent years. In 2006, the park had 3.8 million visitors, the lowest number since 2002. The highest number was 4.1 million in 2003.
Campbell said other parks already have cell phone tours. Likewise, the Cheyenne Visitors Bureau offers free cell tours for seven tours through museums in Wyoming's capital city.
Grand Teton's tour is free, except for the cell phone minutes it uses. (Tip for readers: Listen to No. 4!)
Campbell said the tours have not required the park to consider additional cell phone towers - a source of contention in recent years.
"Fortunately, we have pretty good reception in the park, especially in the sagebrush plains," she said. "We haven't had to add any cell towers or infrastructure in the park. That would be a concern if we had had to do that."
Because of that, don't expect guided trips throughout the park.
"It wouldn't be a good idea," Campbell said, "to do a guided cell phone tour up one of the canyons."
Staff writer Whitney Royster can be reached at (307) 734-0260 or at royster@tribcsp.com.
To listen to a piece of the audio tour and hear park officials talk about why they instituted the tours, please click here.