I traipsed through the buoyant Denali tundra, the wet slush hitting my rain-pants. A highly knowledgeable guide from Camp Denali explained the various mosses and lichens. I walked by a large, curious- looking mushroom.

“What’s that?” I asked my guide, suddenly alert. She confessed that fungi weren’t her forte. Hmm… If I had an Internet connection or 3G I could look it up right now, I thought, bursting my Alaskan wilderness bubble.

I’m not the only hiker who secretly fantasizes about holding up my phone and taking a picture of a flower to have it identified; comparing a picture of Old Faithful today to Old Faithful in the past with a simple stream on my iPad; downloading audio tours; navigating maps; and learning social history routes along my way.

The tastes of the public are changing and those of us in the Great Outdoors business are all considering how to negotiate a wired generation, reliant on iPads and cell phones. Young, diverse audiences–the future park attendees–have grown up with technology as a second language. Traditional interpretive materials—books, brochures, booklets, DVDs, visitor centers, rangers–are losing traction as people turn to the Internet to get park information.

Maybe technology will soon become nature’s primary curator, enhancing the visitor experience in the National Parks. But doesn’t the very definition of nature carry with it a presumption of being unplugged?

Don Kim, Program Associate for Web and Social Media for the Association for Partners in Public Lands (APPL), a nonprofit that works with the agencies that oversee public lands, says there is no easy, absolute answer to the question of how much technology is too much, outdoors. “There are two different worlds with conflicting ideologies,” he said. “One is that you’re out there on your own. Nature. The other is that technology is inevitable…but you have to understand that as a park, you still have to be able to market yourself. The idea is to get people there.”

Invite technology into National Parks or keep it out?

“Geocaching” services are infiltrating parks, according to Kim. “You can map out your routes while you’re hiking and archive, collect photos, put them into the same route, same camping trip, all through the GPS on the phone,” he explains. Petrified National Forest, for example, has a National Park Service (NPS)-sponsored “EarthCache” program, leading visitors to some of the park’s significant geological resources.

Grand Teton and Valley Forge National Parks have self-guided cell phone tours. A Quick Response (QR) code at the Denali Visitor’s Center provides pertinent, on-the-spot information.

Self-contained apps available in real time can be downloaded before entering parks, like “Oh, Ranger!”, the American Park Network’s app sponsored by Ford. There are dozens of thorough Audubon Guide apps on nature on wildlife, including one on North American mushrooms (if I had only known!). There are also practical apps like the phone flashlight, which I’ve personally used on multiple occasions. (Apps don’t just replace paper, but battery- operated camping gear!)

But the tech world doesn’t always jive with park infrastructure or aesthetics. Many visitors understandably want to keep technology out. Based on public feedback in Yellowstone, Wi-Fi was banned from the Old Faithful Inn and the Lake Hotel, according to NPS. The public also complained that cell phone towers were eyesores at Old Faithful and Mt. Washburn.

Where technologies do proliferate, they even challenge the educational role of the classic National Park gateway: the visitor center. Last August, Yellowstone completed its new visitor’s center at Old Faithful. With a $27 million price tag, it’s state-of-the art and hopping. Nonetheless, in this age of self-guided, app-driven and GPS-oriented consumers, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis concedes that the fate of National Park Visitors Centers is precarious.

Perhaps Designated Wilderness Areas should remain the bastions of silence, and National Parks, which have always been the tourist’s darlings, should face the music and start planting cell phone towers and instituting Wifi.