Think about the last time you looked at a map and wondered which route to take. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could actually see the road? How about being able to ask people who have driven that route and get their opinion?
That’s exactly what we did last week when we were parked at the Elks Lodge in Petaluma, just north of San Francisco, and we were going to travel to Monterey – south of San Francisco. The scenic route is Hwy 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. The big highway route is traveling on the east side of the area.
The way you use Google Maps StreetView is to zoom in on an area, then click on the “PegMan” icon and drag him to a piece of road.
When you drop him off, you will see 360 degree photographic view of that piece of road. The picture at the top of this page shows 4 such images of different pieces of the Pacific Coast Highway. Then you can continue to ‘drive’ the road by clicking on the arrows on the road, or by using the map inset at the lower left and continue to drag PegMan to the spots you want to view. I did that for many miles of the highway. (see Tutorial Video: Researching with Google Maps – Membership required) The road itself doesn’t look too bad but what we noticed was that we saw not one RV or big truck after scrolling thru several miles of highway. It seemed to be telling us that people just didn’t take this road with big rigs.
To get firsthand information, we turned to Facebook and the group called “Living the RV Dream.” This is a group started by our friends John and Kathy Huggins, and it now includes nearly 17,000 members who all are interested in the RVing lifestyle. When I posted a message, “Has anyone driven their RV down Hwy 1 South by San Francisco? Have any advice? ….” That post received 32 comments, most of them within the first few hours. Here’s a sample:
Which way do you think we went?
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is Google Map the way to get just a map of an address or area rather than directions to and from? how do
get onto the site? I am green at computer even tho I have been learning and using some years. If I wanted
to use the fancy map (actual scenery) how would i get the site? What is the site for the Living the RV Dream? At this time we ar e off the road due to Richard’s physical problems and he is in assisted
living. I would like to make a file of maps to often go to places of friends, places.— not directions.
THank you for your help. Barbara
Yes, you can go to http://www.maps.google.com and simply look up an address, you don’t have to get directions. Once it finds an address, you will see pop up info below the search box including a place to click for Street View. To make your own map with points you want to remember, you can use the “Custom Maps” feature. There is a ‘show-me-how’ video on that on our Tutorial Videos->Google Maps page.
The site for Living the RV Dream is http://www.livingthervdream.com