Tuesday February 21st 2017

It was a cloudy day today. The temperature was slow to rise from the high 50s, but it topped out in the upper 70s this afternoon. It wasn’t a very eventful day so tonight’s blog is kind of random.

My focus today was finishing up all of my errands so I can move on west tomorrow. I drove back to the Jacksonville area to complete the tasks. It turned out to be around 100 miles. Not terrible, but certainly a greater distance than I thought. I drove there on the Interstates and came back cross country through several small Florida towns. I watch my speed carefully in the towns. A couple of the towns in north Florida have a reputation for speed traps.

Another picture of the Spanish Moss in the trees.

Some of my surprise over actual distances is caused by the online programs I use. Paper maps and atlases are very good at giving you the big picture. If you examine the maps scale at good guess at the distance is right before your eyes. With online maps like Google Maps, very often you are zoomed in to a small portion of the region. Changing the zoom allows you to see more territory but doesn’t necessarily provide a sense of the changing distances. The other oddity is orientation north is not always up. This fact when combined with the fact that all turns are not right angles can get you disoriented when the online map is zoomed in. For example, I am much further west than I thought. Turning right off of Interstate 10 onto Interstate 75 was not a turn from west to north. It was a turn from west to northwest. A paper map makes that clear.

I have a four year old paper Rand McNally Road Atlas that usually stays in the draw. I pulled it out over the last few days to look at aspects of my trip west. The paper maps definitely help me see the big picture better. I need to get a new edition. The roads probably haven’t changed that much but this copy is getting a little dog eared on the edges. When I enter a new state, I usually stop at the welcome center for a map. They aren’t the most detailed, but provide another view.

This evening I’ve started the packing for tomorrows travel day. I hope to get on the road around 10AM. I have a time zone boundary to cross tomorrow. I’ll pickup an hour when I enter Central Time.