Tag: maps

Adding Pins to the Map

Later this summer we will be heading on our annual summer road trip, or what I like to call “adding pins to the map.” For our tenth anniversary, Kelly got me a framed map of the United States that came with a tin of pins. The title at the bottom of the map is “The Adventures of Jamie and Kelly.” I decided that I would only put pins in places that Kelly and I have been together, either with or without our kids. Over the years since we’ve added pins here and there, and I’m excited to be able to add some more pins later this summer.

The Adventures of Jamie and Kelly
The Adventures of Jamie and Kelly

The map hangs on the wall of our dining room. When people see it, they often ask, “What do the colors mean?” I have to explain that they don’t mean anything. They were the colors that came in the tin of pins that accompanied the map. I’ve had to explain this enough times to where I’ve been tempted to put a label in one corner of the map with a legend, “Pin colors carry no meaning.”

We’ve done a good job covering much of the east coast together and with the kids. We’ve been to L.A. together, and to Seattle with the Little Man. We’ve also been to San Antonio with the Little Man. I’ve been wanting to gradually make our way west on our road trips. We drive down to Florida several times a years and I’ve used string to measure out the distance from our house to southern Florida, and then mapped out a circumference to show that same distance spread out to the west. We’ve gone as far as Nashville in our road trips.

Usually, we will head up to Maine in the summer, but every few years we decided to do something different. This year we are planning a trip up to Niagara Falls. Neither of us have been there before, and the kids should enjoy it as well. On our way up, we’ll stop to see friends in Albany, NY. We may hit Cooperstown and the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As it is mapped out so far, our trip is a kind of circle around central New York, eastern Ohio, and Pennsylvania, so we will definitely be adding pins to the map, which is always fun.

I sometimes wonder what this map will look like by the time all of our kids head off for college. I hope that we can fill more of it up before then. Traveling the roads together, going to interesting places, getting the kids out to see things they might not otherwise see is a real treat, and something I am always grateful that we can do. Most of our vacations are road trip vacations of one form or another, and I like that because it frees us to up go at our own pace, and change our minds along the way if something of interest catches our eye. (This happened on the way to Nashville a few years back, when we detoured to the Hermitage, to see the home of Andrew Jackson.)

Another thing I like about this map is it quickly answers the kids’ question, “Have I ever been to…?” All they have to do is glance at the map to know if we’ve been to a place.

Next year, we may need to add a world map, as we are planning to head to Europe with the kids. Then we can look forward to adding pins to that map as well.

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The Joy of Maps

While it is true that in most of my life, I have attempted to go paperless, there are a few places where having the paper makes all of the difference in the world. One of those things for me are maps. Until very recently, I forgot how much I loved maps, what  joy they can be. It took years of using GPS and Google Maps to remind me just how wonderful a foldout map really is.

We are planning a road trip for the summer. It is the first significant road trip I’ve done in many years, and certainly before having kids. When we finally decided to do it, when we knew it was going to happen, I felt a sudden, desperate need for a foldout map. But I didn’t have any. Why would I carry around old, dated maps when I have access to a GPS, to say nothing of Google Maps on my iPhone, iPad and computer? I have this desire to pour over maps when planning a trip, however, and try as I might to use Google Maps for this purpose, it simply didn’t work for me. I needed a paper map.

I’ve loved maps for as far back as I can remember. I’m not sure when I actually discovered maps, or how. I suspect it was looking at the foldout maps that my parents had in their car. Or perhaps the maps that my grandpa sold at his service station. But opening a map was like opening a door into an amazing new world for me. I could pour over a map for hours at a time. There was nothing in school that the teachers could teach me about maps that I didn’t already know. I’d read everything on them in detail. I knew the different colors for the different types of roads. I knew what the numbers meant on 2- and 3-digit interstates. I knew how to read the mileage between two points. Road maps were wonderful for me as a kid. I didn’t know why then, but looking back on it, I think it was because they were so densely packed with information, in an efficient and logical way. They used letters, numbers, words, colors and symbols to convey multiple layers of information. You could tell so much about a place simply by locating it on a map.

As a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, the maps to have were Thomas Guides, thick books with incredibly detailed street maps, far more detailed than your typical foldout map. I lost countless hours studying those maps in detail. There was a time, it seemed, when I knew every road in the San Fernando Valley by heart. If we went somewhere and there was traffic or something blocking our route, I knew exactly where to turn to get around it. I’m not sure if Thomas Guides are in as much use today with the advent of GPS, but they were priceless to me.

When I was a little older, I became interested in contour maps, and would study detailed trail maps for various parks. Then, when I started getting into aviation, I would study the various maps and diagrams that pilots used. Eventually I became a pilot myself and during that time, I learned some pretty cool tricks to reading maps and finding your way around through the use of landmarks and timing.

But slowly, slowly, GPSs crept in. At first they were novelties, but by the time I moved to the metro Washington, D.C. area a decade ago they were becoming less novel and more and more standard. And maps seemed to disappear. This had its affect on me. I never learned the roads in this area nearly as well as when I lived in Los Angeles. I suspect this is because I don’t generally look at maps, but allow the GPS to plan the route for me. Indeed, the last time I can recall using a map to plan a road trip had to be more than ten or twelve years ago when I took my grandpa on a road trip up to Maine. I had so much fun planning that trip, sitting at the table surrounded by my maps and rulers and pencils. I had the entire trip timed out to an estimated arrival. Over the course of the nine hour drive, I ended up arriving within two minutes of my estimate. Almost as a good as a GPS.

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Mapping software

I bought some Garmin mapping software for my new handheld GPS today, got it installed, and tested it out at lunch. I walked over to Pentegon Row to do some reading (I started in on In Memeory Yet Green yesterday) and as I walked overthere, I used the GPS to track my position, and also to see the detailed road maps. They are great. Just like having GPS in the car, except I can carry it around with me.

The unit I have can hold 24 MB worth of maps, or so. I’ve built some collections of places I frequently travel. For instance, I can get all of metro DC, Baltimore, NYC and Rockland County on one set (within 24 MB). Also Seattle/Portland metro area and Los Angeles metro area (at least, the places in LA that I go). It’s really a cool little gadget.