Jackson County Jaunt Ivia Google Earth Flight Simulator

See my previous flight in my Google Earth Flight Simulator Adventures.


I've always loved maps ever since I could remember. The more detailed the map, the better. I used to skip lunch one day a week (back when it was 85 cents) and when I had enough to buy another topographic quadrangle from the power company [Nantahala Power & Light...now long since absorbed by Duke Energy], I'd drop by and get one. They were something like $3 at the time. They are $10 to $15 now, depending on where you get them. Of course, you can get digital copies of them for free if you do a little googling around. (I've got the digital set for all of western North Carolina, a good part of north Georgia and eastern Tennessee)


Anyhow, I wrote all of that to get the point across that I've always been interested in seeing where places were in relation to other places, and interested in seeing the geography. I spent untold hours pouring over the maps, even using tracing paper to see what lakes would look like if they were filled to higher levels, or what a new dam would look like if placed in such and such valley or what the skyline would look like from such and such place.


Now, with tools such as Google Earth, we can see a much closer approximation of what things actually look like from above (or even on the ground), and the Flight Simulator inside Google Earth is an excellent visualization tool that can help us understand and synthesize an even greater understanding of the world around us....and allow us to go places we'll never get to see in person.