It sure would be nice if a bit more vertical real estate could be given to the map on the home page. For me it takes too many clicks and misses to get zoomed into an area of interest. I get lost and have to zoom out and try again. As an aid, I open Google Maps in another window so I can see where I am zoomed in on your site so I know if I need to pan one way or another. Even if it was a toggle for a larger map when actively searching, that would be helpful. While we are on the subject, though I know it was discussed early on, I still find the "collections" of park icons disruptive when trying to research a general area. I'm talking about the round icons with a number on them. It's just hard to get a feel for where things are in relation to one another.
I will be glad to pass along your suggestion about making the maps bigger, and I can see that that would be helpful. However, I am not clear on what you see as a problem with the circles. You do know that you can click on them and the system will zoom in until individual park pins are displayed. Can you explain a little more about what you find "disruptive?" Thanks.
I'd be happy to interact on this as much as needed. As I am thinking about it, maybe my vantage point is key here. I am a full timer. I roam around. I often don't know what exact town I want to go to, but know I want to go into a general geographic area. I want to be able to check out the parks over a broad area - for example, most recently looking for a park that can accommodate big rigs near Yosemite. So I might be zoomed into an area that includes both one or more circles and one or more individual park icons. So I can click on the single park to get its details, but rather than just panning over to other park icons, if I have to click on a circle to zoom in and it makes me loose my "positional awareness." It just seems I find myself doing alot more zooming in and out and panning both when zoomed in and zoomed out and lose all notion of where the parks are relative to one another and possibly in relation to a geographic feature of interest. I guess maybe that is the point. Before, I could zoom into a level of interest and then just pan around to see what parks are where and also have a sense of distances. Now to get park details I am often forced to zoom in by clicking the numbered circles and I effectively get "lost" and have to zoom out again.
Where do you see the map? They used to have a map but don't see it anymore. I wish the map was back so you could see campgrounds where one was travelling especially when your not familiar with the cities and their whereabouts.
I also don't like the numbered circles instead of the simple red flags/pins dotting the map. Even a congested state like Texas was easy to work with when you enlarged the area thereby spreading out the pins. Now, I just click on all the circles in the area I'm interested in and then "shop" the pins just like I've always done.
What device are you using to view the site? Some phones and tablets don't display the map in portrait mode, but do in landscape mode, while others don't have enough resolution to display it in either mode.
