Vote, discover, and champion the U.S. park system—one click at a time.

Why the Internet Needs a New Way to Rank Parks

If you’ve ever Googled “best U.S. national parks,” you know the pain: every travel site has a different top-ten list, and most don’t explain why you’d love one park more than another.

Last spring, while eavesdropping on two hikers at Bryce Canyon arguing about which park really deserved the #1 spot, I had a thought:

Why let static editor lists decide, when millions of park-lovers could rank parks in real time?

That spark became ParkRanker—a head-to-head voting game that lets the crowd create a live leaderboard, powered by the chess-style ELO system. The Bolt “World’s Largest Hackathon” gave me the perfect excuse (and deadline) to ship it.

Meet ParkRanker in 30 Seconds

1. Instant match-ups — Load the site and see two random national parks side-by-side.
2. One-click voting — Choose the park you’d rather visit—no login needed.
3. Real-time ELO scoring — Each vote adjusts both parks’ ratings, reshuffling the leaderboard instantly.
4. Endless discovery loop — After every vote, a fresh match-up appears, keeping you exploring far longer than planned.

Try it now at growthgrail.net.

Under the Hood

Layer_________________Tech_______________Purpose

Frontend & Logic_______Bolt.new________UI, routing, serverless ELO function

Database_______________Supabase________Datastorage and management; real-time updates

Data Ingestion__________Apify_____________Scrapes park information from Wikipedia

AI Summaries__________ChatGPT-4_______Condenses each park’s description into a punchy one-liner

Hosting_________________Netlify____________Continuous deployment + global CDN

Custom Domain________Entri / IONOS____Points the app to growthgrail.net with SSL

Fun fact: My first attempt was to make Bolt crawl Wikipedia. It burned 2.5 million tokens before I pivoted to Apify—lesson learned!

Hard-Won Lessons from a Solo Build

• Pivot early, pivot often. When a tool burns hours—and tokens—without progress, cut bait and switch.
• No-code ≠ no architecture and no planning. Planning and data pipeline are very important.
• Mobile-first isn’t optional. If it breaks on a phone, it breaks—test mobile early.
• DNS is never truly “one click.” Buying a domain is easy; chasing down after several hours why it still does not resolve to my site is not.
• ELO isn’t just for chess. It’s perfect for crowdsourced preference ranking—every vote feels meaningful.
• AI tools soar. Bolt now scaffolds full stacks in hours, not weeks!

Try It, Share It, Shape It

ParkRanker is live, free, and eager for your opinion. Whether you’re a die-hard Yosemite fan or secretly rooting for North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, every click helps crown America’s most beloved parks.

👉 Cast your first vote now at growthgrail.net and tell me on X @Anar_Taori which park you pushed to the top.

Together we can turn our love of the outdoors into a living, community-powered map of U.S. adventures. See you on the leaderboard!