Engineering a New World

Unfortunately, the wonderful Flickr map only lets you display as many points on the map (at a time) as you can fit in thumbnail photos across your screen.  So, for someone like me who meticulously geo-tags every photo taken (in the hopes I’ll one day be able to locate the ideal geo-data visualization app for my photos) the closest thing I can get to a good map is the Flickr Organizr.  Here’s a photo of how it looks:

This is a thank-you for the guys at Carr Subaru, who set us up with our 2006 Subaru Impreza that we used to haul all of our gear across the country.

I figured that most of the people who buy cars from you either (a) never hear from again, or (b) only hear from them again when they come in to bring the car into the shop for repairs.  So, I figured I’d give you some feedback that the car performed perfectly despite the fact that we loaded it up to the limit in terms of towing capacity (around 2000lbs in tow), and hauled it over a 6800’ pass in the Oregon Cascades, a 7200’ pass in Arizona/Nevada, and a 10,600’ pass in Colorado.

And – I might add, we got an average of 20mpg, despite towing!

So, despite the fact that it’s the base 173hp engine and not the WRX, it performed like a champ.  Here’s a couple of photos for you:  [and a map of our trip is here]

In the middle of the Cascades	At a snow-park in the Oregon Cascades
Near Diamond Peak in Oregon	At our Hotel in Las Vegas
[video] Going through a windy pass in Arizona	In the middle of the rain in Utah
At the summit of Vail Pass at 10,603’ in Colorado	Vail Pass, Colorado
Panorama shot – Vail Pass Colorado
[video] Nasty rain storm in Kansas	The 4000th mile of our trip, in Virginia

So, thanks guys!  The car is great!

Now that my cross-country trip is drawing to a close (I should be pulling in to my destination in the DC area tomorrow) I’ve been trying to figure out a cool Web 2.0-style way of displaying where we went on this trip, with the route we took, geo-tagged photos, videos, and all of that sort of thing. 

Unfortunately, I could not find any service that would let me mash up the geo-data I already have stored in Flickr (and I’ve painstakingly geo-tagged all my photos) and then add in some sort of way to draw the lines where we went on the trip.

Furthermore, Flickr maps – as cool as they are – will only display a page of your photos at a time.  So, although I have representative photos that basically draw a line all of the way across the USA, you can’t see that if you look at the map.  So, I’ve been trying to find something better.

Now, Google Maps lets me do something like the following, where I can at least easily load up a map with all manner of meta-data (points, lines that follow roads, HTML, etc) and slap it up on a publicly-available map:

View Cross-Country Road Trip in a larger map

This is a step in the right direction, though I still can’t integrate my Flickr geo-data with the map. So, that leaves me to painstakingly re-add all of my geo-data, or figure out another make-sense way of displaying the data. Still pretty nifty, but someone has GOT to have already worked out a solution to this. It’s not like I’m the first blogger/web 2.0 geek to go on a road trip!

I’ve had a few admonishments for no blog posts over the last two days – sorry about that.  I had an awful Internet connection which [gasp] I couldn’t debug, and couldn’t make work for me.  So, I had to wait until tonight, when I’ve finally made it to Virginia (Lexington, VA, in the bottom of the state) with a mercifully good Internet connection, so as to update my photos and such.

Yesterday and today were a gorgeous change from the flatness of the midwest that we’ve had for the past few days, as we veered off of the Interstate to instead go on state roads through the Ohio River Valley. 

They twist and turn and have great scenery along the way – from all of my various road trips, I’m real surprised that I haven’t yet been here.

I’m going to figure out a good way of depicting my trip through here so far, as I still haven’t found a good way to annotate a Flickr Map.  So, I’ll leave the mapping to a future post, and for now leave you with this:

And here’s a map of our recent West Virginia & Ohio River Valley Photos:

Kat snapped this one, what I thought was a pretty telling image that depicted how high the water was at the St. Louis waterfront by the Gateway Arch.  (Generally, you can see much more of them)  BTW, this is a statue of Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, pioneer explorers, and symbols of the beginning of the great western movement that sprang forth from St. Louis in the 1800’s. 

I’ve just started loading all of my trip photos to date into my Flickr Account, now that I’m at a hotel with some zippety-quick wifi.  I have to drive all day tomorrow, though, so I only got up through Las Vegas.  But, you can see what I’ve got on the map here:

Sorry if some of you aren’t map fanatics like I am, but the whole geo-tagging of photos, and then browsing them with a map interface just does not get old with me.

We’re in Kansas right now, so I have a lot more photos to load up, but let me know if you liked these.  My favorites so far are these two, both in San Francisco:

When driving on the I-70 toward Colorado, if your Subaru is buff enough, you will finally come upon Vail Pass, at a breathtaking 10,603 feet. 

Now, anyone who’s been mountain climbing in the Cascades knows that at about 10,000 feet, you see snow and ice and Glaciers and you lose your breath and have to start wearing gear and all sorts of things. 

So of course, I see that sign, and had to verify, for myself, if they really meant it, and if this pass was indeed at 10,600 feet above sea level. 

While my wife & I are on our way across the country, I finally was able to stop at a place that’s got wifi, so I’m finally able to upload and work with some of the photos & video that I’ve been taking over the last 48 hrs.   (Sorry, yet another opportunity for me to dig on one of the iphone’s only faults — no video). 

We’ve been driving through Utah, Colorado and Kansas over the last 2 days, and have gotten to travel on what I feel are the most breathtakingly beautiful stretches of U.S. Interstate highway that there is.  

Here’s a little sampling:

This was a rest stop in Utah on the I-70, not even marked as a “scenic turnout” or “vista” or anything. Just a bathroom stop.

And this is Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, part of what is the newest stretch of I-70, completed in 1996. Unfortunately, I left my wide-angle lens in the car!

And then here’s driving through the Eisenhower Tunnel on the I-70, at around 9,500 feet in altitude:

As we make our way across Utah and into Colorado, I’m letting Kat drive for a bit so I can take advantage of the fact that we’ve had Edge data service across most of eastern Utah. Lack of ANY service in Western Utah cost us our hotel reservation when we couldn’t call or message them that we were running late, and then a slimy fellow at the Budget in gave away our room. Anyhow, the scenery in the area overcame that slimebucket, thankfully.

I’m stopped at a Burger King in St. George, UT right now, and mercifully they have wi-fi.    I’m spending most of my time, however, reviewing all of the photos we took on our slice through the Yellow Knolls near the Arizona/Nevada/Utah border.  I kept my eyes on the road as Kathryn snapped pics.  Really quite something.  

Hopefully this video will do it a little bit of justice: 

Soon as I have a bit more time, I’ll stick these on a proper Flickr slideshow.