4,3,2,1, Earth below us, drifting, falling...

I love Google Maps.  Especially now that they've gotten so much more sophisticated, even having (in most places) a "street view", in which you can actually see what you would see if you were actually driving down the street in the area at which you're looking.  Yes, I know that's also kinda creepy, but still, you gotta admit it's pretty cool!

I've always just loved maps in general.  I've never been able to travel like I wanted to, so I've always just "traveled" around vicariously through my maps.  Whether it was a map of Missouri, or California (growing up I wanted so badly to go to Los Angeles!  I used to know my way around that area without even being there, just because I had memorized the locations of the different cities in the Greater Los Angeles Area!), or an atlas of the United States, I was constantly looking at my maps!

I can even remember when I was even younger, when we first moved into the house we built in Washburn, and we had that brand new plush carpet, I would "draw" the shapes of different states into it by smoothing out the carpet, then rubbing the opposite way, so the carpet stood up, causing a "shadow" effect.  Yes, I was a dork (and Jenny, you be quiet - I know you still think I'm a dork!). 

I still have a couple of different map books and atlases in my car and a couple more here in the house, including a nice thick World Atlas upstairs.  I look at that all the time, traveling from state to state, then across to Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe - all the places I so want to travel to!  I get lost in the book for a good 1/2-hour sometimes before it's time to come home. 

I threw down a couple of different greens and a little bit of brown this evening because those are the main colors on Google Maps.  Have I mentioned how much I love that page? :-)