If you can dream it, you can pin it.  Heck, even if you can’t dream it, someone else dreamt it and you can just ‘re-pin’ it.  Unless you have been living on a remote island in the south pacific for past six months, you’ve probably heard about the tremendously popular social platform that enables people to create pin boards of things they love or are inspired by, called Pinterest.  Travel, be it a place you’ve visited or a place you like to go to, is a big part of what people share on Pinterest. We thought we’d make travel ‘pinning’ even better by giving people the option to create maps that work with Pinterest so each trip has context to followers.

Here are some cool examples of how people on Pinterest use MapQuest to make their travel related pins even cooler.

How does it work?  It’s super easy, if you just want a map of a location, simply create your map on MapQuest and then click the Pinterest Button at the top right of the MapQuest page. This will create a map image and link that you can then upload to Pinterst and add to your ‘pin board’.

Careful…it’s addictive!

MapQuest is headquartered in Colorado – so most of us love the great outdoors.  We know you do too, considering it’s one of the most-searched categories on MapQuest.com and has been for years!  This sparked an idea: Why not make it easier for you to get the information you want and need with new videos, photos, and guide content?  MapQuest National Parks, located at parks.mapquest.com, is a great jumping off point for your next adventure to one of the country’s 58 national parks.

The content in MapQuest National Parks not only helps travelers as they plan their upcoming trip, but it’s also inspiration for the excursions on your bucket list.  Take a sec to explore all the incredible vistas, stunning natural features and incredibly preserved history that inspired us as we created this project.

Part of what makes this site unique is the videos featuring park rangers from the actual parks themselves.  No one knows Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon or any of these other amazing destinations better than the rangers that live and breathe it everyday.  The site also features breathtaking outdoor photography by QT Luong, a world-renowned nature and adventure photographer.

Whether you’re checking the parks out for free during National Parks Week (April 21-29) or you’re scheduling a summer full of weekend trips to these great natural features, we hope this new tool helps inspire your national parks journey!

Autumn is a season for pumpkins, colorful leaves, and getting so seriously lost in a corn maze that one has to alert the authorities.

Okay, the last one doesn’t occur with regularity, but it did happen to a couple and their infant child in Massachusetts this week. The couple was so helplessly lost in the Connors Farm corn maze in Danvers that they dialed 911 and had to be rescued. By a police K-9 unit.

My first thought upon hearing this news was, “Wow — that’s quite the corn maze.” My second thought was, “If only that lost-in-a-corn-maze couple had a MapQuest app on their smartphone…”

Which is a good point in the story for me to introduce myself. My name is Lance Gould, and I’m the new editorial director of MapQuest. MapQuest is one of the most recognized and trusted brands on the web, and now we’re going to be bringing our readers editorial that can entertain and inform them while still allowing them to get the excellent navigational experiences that they’ve come to expect from MapQuest.

Our first foray into original content is a fall-foliage package called LeafQuest. In this effort, we’ve selected 150 of the most colorful leaf-peeping spots in the whole country. That’s three per state. (Well, 49 states — sorry, tropical Hawaii! — but with Washington, D.C. as a reliable stand in. It’s complicated.)

Each state gets an article providing information on the three fall-foliage spots therein, including links to the official websites of those places; a navigable map demarcating the three leaf-rich spots with pinpoints; and a video showcasing glorious fall-foliage in that state.

Also in the package are three feature essays on autumn. by such esteemed writers as Joyce Millman, a two-time Pulitzer nominee; James Parker, the entertainment columnist for The Atlantic; and Chuck Pfarrer, an ex-Navy SEAL and best-selling memoirist, who has a new book out now on the inside mission to kill Osama bin-Laden. That’s right — we have a fall-foliage story written by a rough-and-ready Navy Seal — that’s just how we roll.

Stay tuned for other great content from MapQuest. Next up is FrightQuest, our Halloween package. And yes, Hawaii, for that one, we’ve got you covered.

–Lance Gould