re: Anyone else obsessed with maps both as a kid and adult?

I was/am 110%. When I was a kid I remember my dad kept road atlases in the car and when we ran into traffic on I-95 he would have me break out the map and I would navigate the back roads to our destination.

It all started by locating our destination street's grid coordinates in the atlas's index. This wasn't too long ago, maybe 2000?

To this day, I still visualize routes between places in my head based on the Rand McNally book for Prince William/Fairfax Counties.

Pretty much everything already posted in this thread goes for me.

I'm particularly fond of city maps and as a young boy I would write to the Chamber of Commerce of larger cities for maps, and more than not they would respond...Lord the excitement.

I do find that GPS has taken a little of the fun away.

I saw this thread this morning and have spent all day at work fricking with maps instead of working. Dual monitor shite with maps on both screens.

Why North Up Projection is Important:

I love maps.. I used to be obsessed with globes. I still have the one I had as a kid. It is "3D". It has all the mountains, canyons, etc scaled down on it.

I always thought it was so cool how you can see where all the land connected at one point.

Yep, always loved maps, and now my son gets one every time we stop at a new state visitors center. Sometimes I get one as well just so my wife will ask why I got two.

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I was near I10 and could go west to Mobile or East to Pensacola. I was going north and both were way out of my way. So I had to zoom way in and plot a course to somewhere I knew. Felt like old times reading a paper map.

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what beach were you coming from?

Piling on...

Big time map/geography geek. Probably one of the reasons I went into city planning/ transportation planning.

-- Always had a fascination with Seattle, bought a street map of there in 1987. Used to look at it all the time; finally visited there and got to use it in 1998.

-- Played a fun game on the extended family vacation in Florida a few years back, broke out Google Earth and we had a blast figuring out who had been the most north, most west, etc. out of the whole group. Found out that most of Peru (where my sis had been) is actually further east than Miami.

-- Always have to have a window seat on the plane and look below for landmarks and such.

-- It surprises me how many people DON'T "get" maps; and only think in 2-D: "take a left, take a right, go past three lights and turn right at the McDonald's," etc. To me, that's like being a rat in a maze. Understanding maps lets you SEE the whole maze.

-- People who don't get maps are the ones who use GPS vocal point-by-point directions, shown on a screen in oblique fashion (almost ground level view). I would NEVER use that. I do like the aerial view GPS with just the blue line route (which is the same thing one would draw on a map) and blue dot showing one's actual location.

I got the Louisiana road atlas which is invaluable for a high school football fan, and two national road atlases that I flip through regularly...

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known for constantly getting lost and refusing to ask for directions.

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that was the most fun part...