Map making software

<p>I intend to travel to two different places (in US) and would like to map them out....my own way. Is there a software that I can pretty much strip most cities and just include my own markers. I've looked at some but they want mother's maiden name and all sorts of other info. I sort of doubt that Google Maps are pliable enough to accomplish this. Any positive input would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>

<p>Les</p>

<p>I'm low tech in this regard, I just use pen, paper and maybe a copying machine:)</p>

<p>Have you tried Google maps, using multiple locations? I've used over a dozen for trip - you define your starting location and the first destination, then add a next destination and so on.</p>

<p> http://www.natgeomaps.com/travel.html</p>

<p>Peter</p>

<p>Thank you for responding. Part of the problem is that one of the trips will be done in somewhat chaotic fashion.....so A-B-C-D will not apply. The luxury of traveling in this fashion is that the weather could play a role and several other dynamics such as staying at one place (especially a desirable one) could determine how much zig zagging will be done.</p>

<p>Wanting for specific area of the map to be digitized, I decided to copy it with a camera, stitch it, and reduce it to workable level. This way I could slap a layer of various destinations + notes (in stand out color)....in digital domain, and still keep the analog map for quick glance. Hmmm, maybe too much time on my hands :>). </p>

<p>Les</p>

 

<p>That's creative Leszek. One of the things we now do is carry an iPad with a 3G connection so we can map out routes on the fly, as long as we're near a cell tower that is.</p>

Ars Technia recently posted an article focusing on iPhone and software to help with mapping, navigation when connected via cellular or wifi network, or not connected at all ...

 

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/02/have-iphone-will-travel-without-a-data-plan/

 

... in reader's comments, one may find software alternatives and other suggestions.

<p>Google Maps allows you to drag your routes to any location. Establish your initial start and destination and you can create hundreds or thousands of intermediate points and route changes. You can even drag your start and destination points to new locals. </p>

<p>One solution you might look at is ArcGIS.com - this is part of a more sophisticated mapping enterprise that allows you to create maps with a variety of different backgroungs including street maps and topographic maps. One in particular is called the 'light gray background' which is a very minimalistic map background that helps provide context for your data but without all the noise that other backgrounds introduce. ArcGIS.com will want you to 'subscribe' and and register though so if you want something more anonymous than this you probably are going to have only a few options available and a lot of those are going to be desktop mapping applications. Search Geographic Information Systems or GIS - though this is probably going to rapidly become more complex than what you want. A lot depends on what you are interested in doing and what you intend to do with the maps you are making. I'm a cartographer and GIS analyst so if you have some questions contact me via email and I can try and point you in a useful direction.</p>

<p>Thanks all for the input.<br>

<br />Christopher, thanks for the specifics. The grey backgrounds sound quite alluring and I did visit arcgis.com. For time being it will be my "go to" plan B. My approach to this is like this, if I have to pay....I'll rather recrank my 'ol AutoCAD and use a layer from that. This mapping approach will be strictly for personal use.....though I may share to help someone in need. At this point, I need to annotate specific interest points on the layer (62 so far :>)...and still have room to add other notes/locations. The layer will also follow my trail in semi analog fashion like....using different color line (?)....without any GPS or any other tracking devices. In any case, I might be making this more complex than it really needs to be......tho the bottom line is that I want this to be useful during my travels.</p>

<p>Les</p>

<p>http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer</p>

<p>Another option you might try is something like an application called Geosetter that is designed for geotagging photos but it seems to me you can upload a track from a GPS device (such as a gpx file that many Garmin GPS units can output). Geosetter uses google maps as the mapping interface but its a pretty good tool for managing geotagged images - I've used it to sync time/date stamped photographs to GPS tracks (basically it matches the time-date stamps of images and the gps positions recorded in a 'track').<br>

Also, the arcgis.com site makes it look like you need to pay for an account but that is for the 'arcgis online for organizations' application - you can still sign up as an individual user and make and share maps for free, and there is also the arcgis explorer application that Arie points to above that allows you some desktop level mapping ability.</p>

<p>dreaded double post gremlin strikes again!</p>