The Gorn-Dee-Kerd Chronicles

Yeah, so I love geography, geology, and all that stuff. Therefore, you just know that I'd get hooked on GoogleEarth when it came out. And I did.

It started off simple enough. I picked my brain for all the cool places that I can remember off of the top of my head, and I "went there" with GoogleEarth. It was awesome. Later on, when our family began going on trips again, I would basically use GoogleEarth to go on an identical virtual trip to anticipate what I will see (it doesn't ruin the experience though, because, as I said in my previous trip report, seeing pictures of the stuff on GE is no substitute for the actual grandeur of nature). For our next trip, I've used it to choose between difference routes. For instance, there are two ways we can leave Crater Lake; 1, I found, had 5 waterfalls along the road worth looking at, and the other only had 1, with nothing more of interest.

Obvious which one I chose. Prepare for mucho waterfall pictures in late June.

But, it was only 2 days ago when I discovered something I can do on GoogleEarth that wasted time like nothing else: River-Following. It's simple: pick a river, preferably a long and well-known one, and follow it to its source. Along the way, pay attention to the landscape around the river channel and see if you can pick out those shaped by the river (i.e. bluffs, meander scrolls, oxbow lakes, etc. etc.); also, make sure you're actually following the river and don't get accidentally sidetracked because of tributaries. For a geography buff like me, this is damn fun.

I've already done it for the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Fraser, and now the Nile (yes, both the White and the Blue Nile). Try it yourself.