In-car guides for Yellowstone and Grand Tetons

There's a 95 percent chance Senior Editor Christine Sarkis is thinking about travel right now. Follow her on Instagram @postcartography and Twitter @ChristineSarkis.

Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

The Handy Item I Always Pack: The Trtl Pillow. It's easy to pack and comfortable, and makes it so I can actually sleep on flights.

Ultimate Bucket List Experience: Seeing the Aurora Borealis from the comfort of somewhere warm, like a glass igloo or hot spring.

Travel Motto: Curiosity is an amazing compass.

Aisle, Window, or Middle Seat: Aisle all the way.

Email Christine Sarkis at editor@smartertravel.com.

See recent posts by Christine Sarkis

While driving from California to Boston a few years back, I spent a lot of time wondering what I was seeing out the window. There’s so much time to digest information on a long road trip, and I really wished for a way to soak in the cultural and natural history of the areas we passed on our way east.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I read about GaperGuides, a GPS dashboard guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The guide senses your location and plays local history, interesting stories, and fun facts through your car speakers. I imagine it’s like being on an interesting tour without having to ride in an uncomfortable bus or sit behind loud talkers who take pictures of themselves flexing their muscles in front of every scenic outlook.

The only flaw I can see from the website is that there’s only one place to pick up and drop off the device. If you’re not making a loop that starts and ends in Jackson, Wyoming, where the GaperGuide office is, you can return the unit in the mail, but you’ll have to pay the $35 daily rental fee until the postmark date and an additional $35 to cover three to five days of shipping.

We hand-pick everything we recommend and select items through testing and reviews. Some products are sent to us free of charge with no incentive to offer a favorable review. We offer our unbiased opinions and do not accept compensation to review products. All items are in stock and prices are accurate at the time of publication. If you buy something through our links, we may earn a commission.