Sunday, July 29, 2007

Google the Earth

We were planning on taking a trip up to Bozeman to visit our son some time this summer and this weekend turned out to be the time. He recently moved,however, and we needed to find his new address before we left home. It wouldn't be a problem he assured us, as he could find it easily on Google Earth, a free downloadable program which displays maps of the entire earth with a wealth of information, more than some of us actually want displayed; our house shows up quite clearly on the maps! Anyway, in preparation to go to Bozeman, I tried to find his address and failed miserably. I checked Google Maps, Google Earth, Microsoft Streets & Tips, Mapquest and even an old-fashioned fold up and stick in your glovebox map we picked up on our last trip to Bozeman. NO LUCK! My husband went into search mode and checked out realors on the Internet and finally found a lead on the location. Later, our son called and he and his dad both got on the Google Earth map and zeroed in on the location using longitude and latitude. After taking road construction projects into consideration, they mapped out a route and we got to his house with no problems at all. It turns out that he lives in a brand new subdivision that shows up on the Google map, but only as building foundations. None of the street names were in the database so we couldn't search the names, but our son could find it because he knew right where to look, now we do too.

Later, my husband was able to locate the ship he served on while in the Navy. It has been turned into a Museum at the Naval Museum in Buffalo, NY.

Google On!

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