Google Maps and Street View

It's our last night in the RGV.

Yee HAAAHHHH!!!!

The moose is just about ready to roll, and so are we. The cats, on the other hand, are clueless. It's been so long since they've been on the road they've surely forgotten what that's all about. But, they'll be reminded first thing tomorrow.

After spending more than a month here, we know there's a certain stretch of freeway we'd like to avoid on our way out, if we can. It's out of our way, for one reason. And, if we need another, all we can say is it's CRAZY! When we picked up our licenses the other day, we tested out a possible alternate route out and it looked good, except for one weird little four-point turn around a courthouse in the middle of the road. With that trial route behind us we loaded our starting and ending point in Google Maps once again and tweaked it just a little, and it found a way to avoid the courthouse in the middle of the road. Woo hoo!

When you're driving 50-plus feet of really tall vehicles that you can't back up, you learn early not to trust Google Maps or any other GPS routing program. After all, most of them are designed to find the shortest route from Point A to Point B for your basic sedan, and not a tall, wide and long rolling billboard. Thankfully, there's Street View.

By clicking on the cute little yellow man on Google Maps you can virtually cruise along any route and check for low clearances, narrow shoulders and the like. In just a few short minutes I gave the Google-suggested route out of here a big thumbs up.

It's been a couple of months since we've bought fuel. And, we're gonna need some tomorrow. I remembered seeing a Flying J on the way here a month or so ago. But, of course, its exact location is a mystery. With a quick check of the Flying J website I found the location of the travel plaza. And, with Google Maps I checked out the satellite view and spotted the two easy-access RV-friendly islands. It looks good and should be an easy in and out. With a quick point and click I adjusted our route to include a quick fuel stop. I mailed the route to myself so it'll be easily accessible from my phone as I sit in the navigator/safety director seat tomorrow morning.

We have 301 miles to travel tomorrow. It's a bit more than we like to do. But, with the help of all this technology we sure hope it's a breeze. At the very least we'll get to avoid that crazy RGV freeway.