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Ha! I see him right now! In the corner, partway under that trellis in front of the italian restaurant!
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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We're looking at that map and we have found our house. In fact, I'm in the back yard, sunning myself. Unfortunately, I'm in the shade, so you can't see me. No, wait, that's "fortunately." Plus, it's so embarrassing to fall alseep while tanning yourself and wake up in the shade.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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I was planning to drive up to Greensboro and haunt all the restaurants he'd mentioned in his columns until I spot him.
If we set up tents on your lawn, you won't get a restraining order, will you? Because those are kind of rude.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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This is Greensboro NC. If you sleep on my lawn, you'll drown as the groundwater rises to cover you.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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It has no idea what to do with Sri Lanka. It found Vancouver, British Columbia fine. Queen Elizabeth Park is exactly where I left it.
It found Norman Wells, North West Territories which, I will admit, surprised me. It didn't have enough detail to see where my sister used to live, though. But you can see the barges approaching town, and the gas islands - what looks like civilization on the islands in the middle of the Mackenzie River are all oil wells or the like. No houses, nothing. Just oil.
Which brings back a memory. The summer I went up to visit my sister when they lived there, we took a boat trip up the Mackenzie River. We being my sister, her husband, her daughter, her son, and her husband's brother. The boat was newly acquired, so they didn't know yet at that point the extent of repairs or maintenance that would be required on the boat.
That last sentence is called foreshadowing, in case you missed it.
We had plans of heading up to Fort Good Hope, about 30 miles or so further north along the river. The river, by the way, empties into the Arctic Ocean.
Well, we had problems. The engine ended up sputtering out and dying. We were intending to be back home that evening (we left fairly early in the morning), but with all the engine problems, we burned through gas about four times faster than we should have.
We ran out of gas.
Sometime late that afternoon, a barge passed by. Well, this is a mighty wide river, and even in August, it can get chilly that far north. The river isn't used enough that you can be cavalier about things like people asking for help on the side of the river, despite the fact that this river is the main means of transport in the north when there's no ice on it. I mean, in the day and a half that we were out, we saw one barge and one boat.
So this barge is going past, sees us, and brother in law and brother in law in law hold us gas cans - universal signal for "we have no gas". The barge turned around while it sent out a boat to deliver gas to us - 2 cans. When the boat got back, the barge turned around again and continued on its merry way.
The testosterone-enhanced individuals among us got the boat started again, and we continued on our merry way. Until we ran out of gas again.
The other adults in the crowd were in, shall we say, a foul mood. I didn't care so much. I mean, sure, inconvenienced, but heck, I'd have a story to tell for years. My niece was 12 at the time, so what does it matter to her? My nephew was 8 months old. He was hungry.
I should also mention that my sister, like all of us in our family, packed with emergencies in mind. We were supposed to be gone for lunch only, but she brought enough food along that we were okay. Well, not well-fed or anything - we got hungry. But starving? No. The hot chocolate ended up going completely to nephew - the formula ran out too fast and my sister was already weaning him. My sister also brought along spare jackets, blankets, and things like that. So, inconvenienced, yes. In trouble, no.
We ended up having to sleep in the boat with tarps propped up for a roof. Well, it works. I slept in the front of the boat under the steering wheel with my niece while the various other adults slept either across the seats or on the floor. All in all, not comfortable. Not at all comfortable.
The next morning, it was decided that the brother in law in law, being the fastest of the lot of us, would run into town (Norman Wells, that is, and about 15 or 20 km away) while the rest of us pulled the boat to the head of the island we thought we were on. A few kilometres of hauling the boat, and we realized that we were on the shore, not an island, so we stopped hauling and parked ourselves.
Sometime later that morning or perhaps early afternoon, a boat goes by. It sees us, it approaches us, and we all get in, hoping that he can take us to Norman Wells. No go. He was moving from Fort Good Hope to Norman Wells and had a lot of heavy boxes, including his big screen tv on board, and it couldn't take all of us. So sister and baby went while the rest of waited at the boat.
Eventually, the guy came back with gas cans. A whole lotta gas cans. My sister, who worked at a place that also sold gas, got her boss to open up shop so she could buy fuel and sent it back to us with the guy on the boat. He happily did, refusing to allow us to pay for his fuel. We had no idea where brother in law in law was - sister hadn't seen him on the way back.
After we got the gas loaded up on the boat, we headed back to Norman Wells, and who do we see, but brother in law in law in his single engine airplane flying overhead, making sure we were okay.
Turns out, he got to town after my sister had already sent the fuel back, and headed back to make sure we were okay. He followed us all the way back home, as did the guy with the moving boat.
We found out after the fact that we had travelled far enough - before turning around - along the Mackenzie River that we had made it as far as the Arctic Circle. Woohoo!
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Here's another interesting link: Area 51, NV
There's definitely a lot of stuff out there. BTW, you can't zoom in too close, and if you switch to the regular, non-satellite, map view, it's easier to tell where you are.
Added: Here's a link to an airstrip in this same area. If you zoom in real close, you can acually see an airplane on the strip.
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Neat. Here’s the megalopolis of Grafton, WV . You can see the Tygart Dam at the bottom of the pic. I live about a mile and a half down the river from the dam on the left of the river, but on river side of the road. You can see KC (my husky, chasing some ducks) on the river banks of my backyard. I’m out on my run which basically follows the river on the other side of my house loops around through town and back along the river on the other side after the second bridge then back to my house. It’s a really nice 7 mile loop. Fun!
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I wonder how old these maps are? My apartment complex only shows up as a construction site, but it has been finished for about 9 months. Pretty cool though.
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I hadn't noticed the satellite feature before. That's really cool. And I love that you can click and drag to move around.
I wonder how much longer Google can keep getting things right? They have to mess up sooner or later, don't they? Or is that just an Apple thing?
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I can't find my house. I follow the big road nearby, and then lose it in the fuzzy parts of the map.
Posts: 4174 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I'm in my accounting class at school and we are all having fun finding our houses, the school, etc. Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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The pictures of Madison I'm looking at right now are several months old - the quonset hut is still intact behind the Education building (where I currently am and work).
Otherwise this is a lot of fun. It's making me not work Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I played with this service last year. If you download the Keyhole demo program you can get more detailed, zoomed maps, angle them for a fly-over view, zoom along the coast, lots of creepy fun. Had a ball sending friends satellite photos of their yards...
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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We had a lot of fun last night finding my husband's work, then finding the remote lot, and trying to figure out when the picture was taken based on the number of cars in the lot, then looking up the houses of everyone we know...
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I wish I had a better memory. I looked at some of the places I lived growing up and couldn't find my house. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Quid, your derail story was like reading the Canadian version of Three Men in a Boat, one of my favorite books. I can imagine that the adventure wasn't much fun, but reading about it sure was!
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Me either, but then I'm from a "town" that might as well be a very large village. I have found my old house on some other sites. This one's too blurry. Oh well.
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Jeniwren - it wasn't not fun at the time. I was up there for an adventure. I mean, how many people have ever been to a town so remote that the nearest doctor is a one hour flight away by jumbo jet or four hours by 2 engine milk run planes? How many people have been to the only international airport in the world without any security of any kind? Or where staff grow potatoes and other veggies on the runway side of the fence at the airport?
Norman Wells has a fossil hunt every year because of the open fossil beds.
As far as the boat incident on the river, I was fine. I had fun. Just the other adults who didn't. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed reading about it. I enjoyed writing about it. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I can see my front yard... in significantly better condition than I keep it. And there's my neighbor's bit of perfection, brown and crusty. Take that, Mario!
Posts: 2523 | Registered: May 2000
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I was going to link to terraserver myself, but pajeba beat me to it. The pictures are older, but you can zoom in closer.
Posts: 289 | Registered: Apr 2005
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"In the picture of San Francisco, right on the top of Nob Hill, I saw Tony Bennett's heart."
A likely story, Mr. Card. Weren't those little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars blocking your view?
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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The Satellite maps won't work for me. The regular ones work just fine but when I switch to satellite view it just looks greyish brown. None of the buttons appear to work either. What am I doing wrong?
Posts: 55 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I think it is getting hit pretty hard right now (the server) because I can get some sites, but not others -- and on those, it will just say "loading kh.google.com in the status bar. But if I zoom out, I can pull it up.
I think lots of people just found it and are overtaxing it (like my boss is right at the moment)
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It found Vancouver, British Columbia fine. Queen Elizabeth Park is exactly where I left it. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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But you can see the barges approaching town, and the gas islands - what looks like civilization on the islands in the middle of the Mackenzie River are all oil wells or the like. No houses, nothing. Just oil.![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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