View 2-2 The Gulf Minneapolis-Lake Pepin in a larger map
I've made a bunch of maps like this to mark places that could prove to be useful for our trip. This one covers Minneapolis to Lake Pepin and I've added symbols to include places such as marinas, motels, grocery stores, etc.. Move your mouse cursor over a symbol and click to see more info. Oftentimes if you zoom in it will help to better distinguish one symbol from the other where they are clustered together. In making the maps I had initially tried to jamb the entire 1800 mile route into one map but soon realized at about 200 Points of Interest things started to get squirrelly and crash. To work around this I decided to break the trip into multiple segments with each map containing about 150 POI's. This resulted in 9 different maps to cover the full distance to Apalachicola, FL and includes well over 1000 POI's. I don't think we'll be hitting them all and many of them are marked for contingency purposes only. For example, I've marked far too many boat ramps but it's comforting to know where they are in case we need to get off the water quickly. And while I know Mary doesn't have any particular affection for boat ramps I think she'll come to appreciate them as many will have some kind of toilet facilities. I use the words, "some kind" because I'm sure many will only be a slight improvement over a bush, maybe.
If you wonder how I made these maps the answer is, the hard way. I zoomed in and visually scoured the shoreline of the entire route looking for features of interest. After a bit of practice you develop a feel for what to look for and can almost begin to predict where things will be. I'm not trying to promote Goog Maps but you should try the "My Places" feature to plan a trip or vacation for yourself. I'll use it on my next motor home trip for sure.
The most important places marked are the marinas and possibly next are the motels. I didn't worry too much about marking restaurants unless there was something remarkable in the area or they were very close to the water. A close observer might notice that public libraries are marked in the larger towns. That's not because I need to return my overdue books. Remember we'll be outside all day long so on a rainy day we'll need to slum around to find a roof to get under. You can only hangout at a restaurant or store so long and a library should make a good alternate where we can spend more time. Picture a nice air conditioned space with comfy reading chairs. Sounds nice! And please excuse my propensity to mark ice cream and coffee shops. It's my trip and I get to set the priorities.
Don't be confused about the weird choice for some of the symbols on the map. For example I used the blue "P" that is normally used as a parking symbol for a car to instead mark boat ramps along the river. That's because there are limited choices for symbols in Goog Maps. I know I could import some from other places on the web but I chose instead to be lazy. There are some other weird choices but at least I was consistent in my symbol usage.
I plan to use these maps a fair amount on our journey and I'm wondering if they might prove to be more useful then the long established bible of the river, Quimby's, which has been published almost forever. I do have an old copy of Quimby's that I'll take along as a reliable backup just in case all the modern e-devices go kaput. Otherwise I'll be leaning pretty hard on the tech gadgets.
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| Current Edition of Quimby's Cruising Guide |
Let me know if you have trouble viewing the map and I'm open too, to adding places you might know of that I missed.