some technology
check out a satellite view of the exact spot i camped at in Anza-Borrego a couple weeks ago. you can zoom in/out and scroll around to see the whole park; also switch to map view (link at the top-right of the page) to see road names and stuff, though most of the dirt roads are unlabeled. then check out the hotel my mom stayed at that week. i’m not sure how old the sat pics are; they show the SD convention center which is fairly new, but the construction shown def isn’t there anymore. also, there’s the spot on Santa Cruz Island where I spent my spring break (hiking & kayaking). sweet; not only can you make static links to these pages, you can give them a “caption” by changing the search string.
this stuff is cool. it’ll definitely help with planning trips. unfortunately they don’t have high-res sat pics of the more remote areas so you can’t always zoom in enough to see the trails (poor death valley is neglected by the satellites).
update: MS’s TerraServer has some more. The aerial photos are different; some better and some worse, but it also links them to topo maps! (they look identical to the ones on TopoZone, which has more options for the topos like picking scale, but an awkward interface). Here’s the same spot on Santa Cruz Island. wonder how long til Google adds topos.
‘nother update: in my geeking i found a website where this guy saves GPS data has trails displayed on google maps (and it can display the trail overlayed on a satellite image). that is way cool; best guidebook ever. but you need gps data from somewhere.