Jen reminded me of this, when she mentioned mapping out her route the other day.

I'm a walker, and last year I decided to "walk" to all different people's houses I knew. I did it on the Gmaps Pedometer site: Gmaps Pedometer and I really liked it! You can map out your route, and it shows on the map with a little line, then you can save it and go back to it. So what I did was, I kept a chart with all the walks I took and their distances, and so whenever I took another walk I would just go back to the site of my last route update (you can just email the url to yourself when you save your route) and add on to what you already have. It will measure your distance in kms or miles, and it will tell you your total distance as well as the distance of your last leg. You can also zoom in as close as you like and as far out as being able to see the whole continent. You can see the maps in a traditional view or using the google earth satellite view. I really liked being able to see how far I had gone all season! And as I got closer to someone else's house on the map, I'd be motivated to walk that little bit farther to get there!

Kind of cheesy maybe, but it really kept me going last year and this year I'm going to just add on to last year's distance and see if I can make it right across the country eventually! So I just thought I'd share that with you all in case any of you were interested in keeping track of your routes and "walking" across the country or something, as I know some other people who do.

It's also just a great way to see how far a route is, if you don't have a pedometer.

that is way cool! Does it have to be to an address?

No. What I did is I started from my house, and then I just kept extending the line out from there, as I kept walking and walking. When you go to the page you start with a map of all North America, and you can narrow it down and zoom in more and more by double-clicking the area you want to centre it to and then zoom in using the slider thing on the left, until you get to the point where you can see your own street, and then you click a button that says something like, "Start recording" and you double-click where you want to begin (for me, in front of my house) and then off you go!