I’m hitting the trail for a last-minute camping vacation before school starts. It’s been a great summer, but where has it gone? We’re doing a large loop through Colorado with a mix of camping and cabins. The idea is to explore our beautiful state, with plans to hit towns and scenic byways that we’ve never seen before. The web and web mapping tools were an integral part of this planning, but the process could be much more seamless and far less time consuming.
The planning process began while I was on the road with my wife and I sharing a Google “My Maps” page. We both posted points of interest that we’d like to see, and things that we’d like to do, and then winnowed that down and formed a schedule. It was a great way to work on this together, with input from the kids of course. We then started trolling the web for details on camping spots and other items of interest, and that’s where the planning process really bogged down.
My standard setup is a laptop with an extra screen, and the two-screen view is great for combining website details with a map view. But on the road, with only one screen I was going crazy. It’s really hard to go back and forth between a map view and other content, and compile that detail in a meaningful way. It would be nice to see a vacation oriented web mapping service that allows you to search for lodging options and attractions without having to flip back and forth between a bunch of different sites.
The various map views were a great resource, but they also tended to get in my way. I love the terrain feature in Google Maps, particularly in rugged Colorado, but the limited labels in that view make it necessary to go back and forth within the map views to compile good meaning from what you’re seeing. I spent a bit of time in Google Earth exploring potential routes and attractions, but that meant having a whole other application to switch between.
The fact that I’m able to explore an area in depth well in advance, is light years ahead of where we were even a few years ago. I really like the ability to pull together sites that simply list companies with those that act as trip advisers to relate first-person experiences, but then I needed to also condense that detail on a map. I can see that the GeoWeb is evolving nicely to make vacation planning much easier and intuitive.
A place rating system would be a nice addition to web mapping. Seeing vacation-oriented locations on a map based on their popularity and the quality of the experience would make this planning much easier. The driving reason to spend so much time planning is that we want to avoid a sub-par experience during our precious time off. It’s a common goal of all of us, so there’s definitely a business case there.
I guess I should be content that at least I can access all the information that I need online to make informed decisions on sites and activities. It’s just too much of a time sink right now because the individual has to act as the information aggregator.
