More Trip Stuff

Sometimes I feel like my posts don’t quite convey the excitement I sometimes feel about our trip planning, or more precisely, why I feel that way.  During final preparations for our trip this weekend, Ann was taking care of one of her main trip-planning responsibilities - getting all of our electronic maps in order.  Well, as I walked past her office I glanced over and stopped in my tracks (yes, I know, it happens to me all the time).  I decided I needed to share what she was working on just to show you why I’m so excited about one leg of the trip.

As I’ve mentioned  before, there is no such thing as a perfect map.  No map can contain the perfect amount of information for every single type of need.  Sometimes you need/want more detail, sometimes less.  I guess that’s why the best GIS systems have layers that you can turn on and off (I use the zoning layer all the time for my work). And why I often have multiple maps of any given area we’re headed into.  Well the map Ann had up was a topo map for our off-road GPS unit, and it was so much better than the detailed map of the Alstrom Point - White Pockets segment of our trip I included in the last blog post.

On this map, the key GPS points are shown by blue dots or the white rectangles with blue surrounding them and the numbers inside.  If you recall, we’ll be coming in from the north and heading east towards Lake Powell.  That entire track in yellow past Waheep Creek is off-road driving, and the last part of it to get to Alstrom Point isn’t even shown at this level of the GPS map.  The same is true for the stretch that goes eastward into the Paria (the points at the lower left, from #13 Turn for White ).  

Hopefully, this map gives you a sense of the topography we’ll be navigating and why I am so excited about this part of our trip.  One look at it definitely brought a smile to my face!