Find a California State Park from your Smart Phone

California State Parks has introduced a system for the last minute camper or recreation seeker that is designed to run on a broad spectrum of mobile devices and smart phones. The mobile app displays the availability of campsites from two weeks to 48 hours out. For the last minute recreation seeker, it provides additional information on activities like biking, hiking, tours, fishing and more for all State parks.

It helps visitors locate a park, make reservations, find bike trails or beach wheelchairs from the palm of their hand. In addition, visitors can check out seasonal parks, provide input to the park system on Facebook and learn about new stuff coming on Twitter. "We want to give our visitors a user friendly mobile connection to their State Parks. People lead busy lives and don’t have time to plan ahead; this lets them be spontaneous," said Ruth Coleman, director of California State Parks.

To use the application, grab your mobile device or Smart Phone and go to http://m.parks.ca.gov. Pick a topic, like "Find a State Park," and then decide how to search -- by region, activity, facility or county. Within a couple of clicks, you'll have a listing of all the parks in that part of the state. When looking for a campsite, click on "Find Reservation Availability" which leads to the ReserveAmerica site and you can view places and maps to see available campsites.