Friday, October 22, 2010

Posting our itinerary to Google Maps

This has been a fun learning experience!  I have been exploring New Zealand through online research, books and with Google Earth.  Google Earth is very cool, especially with all the photos you get from users who have shared their beautiful photos.

I have laid tracks and provided our itinerary for the North Island so far.  The next on my TO DO list is the South Island.

On our travel map there are many different icons.

The camera icon indicates a place that has great photographic quality.  I will be stopping at these places to take photos and videos.

The tent icon represents where we will be stopping for the night.

The flag icon is a place that has interest to us.

This icon below of the bungee jumper;
is our adventure icon.  This indicates a place of interest that is adventurous and we will participate in some kind of thrilling activity that we are excited to try.


The purple people icon to the right is us; Shane and Tegan.  This represents us and where we are currently on our travels.  I hope to have the map centered on us during each leg of journey.  Currently we are stationed in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; where we will be until next September.

The icon of the truck is where we will pick up our Spaceships campervan.

The airplane icons are the airports we are traveling to while we journey to and from New Zealand.

The psuedo rugby player (I know it is a soccer player, I may change this later) is the place where we will be watching our Canadian team play its games.

That is an introduction to our map that shows our current itinerary.  If you want to learn more about Google Maps just head over to http://maps.google.com/  Click on My Maps to get started.

Something I learned while adding my waypoints was that my map was large enough to split onto another page.  Unfortunately, the data from the 1st page doesn't display on my map when I am working on the 2nd page.  There is a solution for viewing and showing your entire map if your map grows large enough and is split over 2 pages.  The solution is given here for fixing your map on Google maps.

I still have more points of interest to add to the North Island and I am excited to see what we encounter on our travels.  We are most definitely going the scenic route.  Oh ya, our itinerary, it is negotiable.  Only getting to the games is important to us.  If we want to enjoy a place longer than what we planned for we will.  Cheers!