How many times have you driven down a road and seen a historical marker and wondered, “What was that about?”

I enjoy driving quite a bit, but even so, I miss a lot of the details even in my daily commute.  I’m not about to pull over so that I can read the sign and end up 10 minutes late to my destination.  Instead, I’ve learned of a great phone app that helps fill in those gaps.  It’s all Google powered and is based on your global position.   Sure, we’ve heard about Google Now and it has a bit of a “Big Brother” feel to it at times, but Field Trip has a decidedly less obtrusive handling of your location and the cool stuff around you.  It pulls the information about locations around you from a number of databases that are already geospatially coded.  So, when you drive past the historical marker for the first time it can pop up a data card showing a picture and text about the location.  You can then choose whether you want to know more about it.

When you first download it to your phone (it is both Android and Apple friendly) you have the option to go through and set up how often it will notify of interesting tidbits in the world around you.  I chose the middle ground option and it is just right for me.   I often find that once I reach my destination I will sit for a minute and peruse the notifications that have popped up as I have driven around the area.  Locations that I have been interested in, but never took a moment to learn about are right there at my fingertips.

To read the rest of this article, please check out the latest issue of Going In-Depth.