Post a random cool screen shot from Google Maps - include general location

[cbdo2007]

somewhere in kansas

[femmocrat]

1. That is very cool. It looks like a painting.

What are those round things? (probably a dumb question)

[Archae]

2. Irrigated fields.

The sprinklers travel in a circle.

[femmocrat]

3. How can some of them be 3/4 of a circle?

[Archae]

10. Not sure...

Maybe they ran out of water? :-)

Actually they don't irrigate the entire field at times.

[bluedigger]

14. They aren't lawn sprinklers, lol.

They probably look something like this.



They move from a center pivot point where the water is hooked up and are rotated across the fields as needed. They can be several hundred feet long. The 3/4 circles probably indicate where a quarter section of the land has been taken out of production for some reason, i.e. the homestead.

[Bucky]

21. Pacman is a farmer

I see a picture like that and my first thought is "ground subsidence."

[triguy46]

56. You just set them to go as far as you want. They move slowly....

They have just about pumped the aquifer dry out there, growing wetland crops in dryland territory. Cool looking but environmentally unsound.

[cbdo2007]

4. They look like clocks each set to a different time. Or a bunch of pie charts.

yeah, I was just scanning Google Maps through Kansas (I'm in Missouri) and noticed how cool it looks. Zoomed out they look pretty crazy cool as well...

[cbdo2007]

5. Northern Lake Winnipeg

[Crystal Clarity]

6. OMG when I woke up bleary eyed and saw that view

on my first trip somewhere over our country's midsection, I was SO disoriented. Maybe it was the Dramamine, but all I could think was wtf is that??? It took a while for it to register that these must be some sort of irrigation patterns. The guy sitting next to me was weird, so I didn't dare ask him... As if he wasn't thinking the same of me... :rofl:

I couldn't stop staring at the perfect squares and patterns though...I still don't totally 'get' it. How can anyone make boundary lines so perfect? Are there NO geographical issues that preclude that? :shrug:

[cbdo2007]

9. Ever been to Kansas?? ha ha, there are no geographical issues that prevent anything.

Just set the car on cruise control, prop a stick under the stearing wheel to go straight and you can go for hundreds of miles literally without turning or anything. Ah, it's beautiful though in it's own way.

Here is another image with even more perfect boundary lines. This is Southern California and must be ditch irrigation rather than the round sprinklers from the KS picture:

[Crystal Clarity]

12. OMG that cracks me up...

There is an area near where I live which is known locally as 'the flats'. This is where HS kids, including myself (WAY back in-the-day) used to race. It was perfect, because it was a stretch of road of almost nearly flat paved terrain w/no curves and lots of field stretching a whopping 4 or 5 miles! LOL!

But yeah, these maps are so cool. The California map you show is overall quite perfectly geometric despite some clear geographic 'issues'... Maybe it goes more into how land was divided up? :shrug:

BTW- thanks for your patient help in showing me how to do this... but (I must explain) that you are dealing w/someone who is thrilled to have just learned how to upload pics... Hey, I'm pretty new to this computer thing... lol :blush:

I love terrain maps like this, so have actually copied to myself how to do it from your post for a later date. Thanks a lot! :hi:

[av8rdave]

37. Looks like the southern tip of the Salton Sea

Am I close?

[cbdo2007]

51. Yeppers!

Right on the money. Good eye!

[av8rdave]

57. Just flew over that area last night

I see it often.

[Goblinmonger]

59. North Dakota is the same way

Here is where I grew up in ND (north of Grand Forks). The squiggly river is the ND/MN boarder.

[Crystal Clarity]

7. Please explain how

or give a link as to how to do it. :dunce: <--- me

[cbdo2007]

8. Hello...

here's how I did it.

Go to maps.google.com and scroll around, zooming in and out, looking around until you see something cool. Once you've found something, hover over where it says "Satellite" in the upper right hand corner and uncheck the box to turn OFF labels. This gives you just the terrain image.

To do a screen shot, hit the following keys on your keyboard at exactly the same time: ctrl and prt sc This will copy a screen shot of whatever is currently showing on your desktop. Go into some type of photo editing software ( I use thumbsplus) and Paste the screen shot there. Feel free to crop and resize if you need to.

Then, go to an online photo hosting website such as www.tinypic.com and upload the image to that site. After you have uploaded the image, they will give you a few options to embed the image onto a web page or message board. Choose the option for "Message Board" and just copy the text showing and paste it in the body of your message here. It will automatically embed the picture into the body of your message.

Give it a shot and let me know if you have any additional questions along the way.

[Odin2005]

11. Compare that to some French farms in the Campaign region.

The plots still look medieval; long and irregular.

[krispos42]

15. The Nazis did some spectacular camoflauge in France

I read a book called "To Fool A Glass Eye", about deception and such during World War Two. They did some pretty neat stuff in the French farm country.

[Bucky]

24. You mean other than rounding up the families of Resistance fighters?

[krispos42]

47. On occassion! n/t

[bluedigger]

16. And back in the U.S.

This is in southern Louisiana - the French settlement pattern is still evident.

[Odin2005]

17. Very cool!

[krispos42]

13. Off of the coast of Dubai

The circular design on the bottom is 4 miles across.

[Bucky]

22. In 50 years, those are all going to be under water. Don't buy there.

[Mist]

18. White cliffs of Dover:

[Mist]

19. And another, just because it's so weird-looking:

Waterloo Station in London:

[cbdo2007]

26. Whoa....that one is cool.

Good job.

[Arugula Latte]

20. What an awesome thread!

Thanks! :hi:

[Bucky]

23. Superclose

[cbdo2007]

25. ha ha, wow, that is really close!

[neverforget]

45. I like the guy looking up. How did you find this or how did you hear about this

particular location?

[cbdo2007]

27. eastern iowa

[cbdo2007]

28. Pennsylvania

[cbdo2007]

29. northern Canada

[denbot]

33. Cool. I'd bet the farm that the circular lake is a meteor crater.

And raise you a cow.

[cbdo2007]

34. That or a volcano?

[cbdo2007]

35. Yep, you're right....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_Manicouagan

Wow! That is an impressive reservoir!

[cbdo2007]

30. northern alaska

[Phentex]

54. cool

I like this one.

[Ptah]

31. Willcox Playa, southeastern Arizona

[av8rdave]

38. I used to fly low levels over that while in the military many years ago

[Ptah]

39. Which aircraft were you flying?

:patriot:

[av8rdave]

40. That was way back in my T-37 Instructor days

[siligut]

46. Similar to White Sands, New Mexico

[Tikki]

32. Eastern Washington State near Pomeroy..

Tikki

[cbdo2007]

52. Cool - i like the random green square in the upper right.

[charlie and algernon]

36. The Moon or Nevada?

The big crater is the result of a nuclear bomb.

[hunter]

41. They're all nuclear bombs.

Satan's playground.

[Blue-Jay]

42. I like this one.

[petronius]

44. Very cool! It looks like the face is actually a depression, although it

sure fools the eye into thinking it's raised. Is that anything special at the end of the road, or just a water tank or something?

[martymar64]

43. Nazca Lines, Peru

[siligut]

48. Aegean Sea. This is fun, thanks cbdo2007

[krispos42]

49. An island in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island, in the ocean

An island in the ocean:




A lake on an island in the ocean:




An island on a lake, on an island in the ocean:



A lake on an island, in a lake on an island, in the ocean:




In island in a lake, on an island in a lake, on an island in the ocean:






Here's a slideshow with some better ground and aerial pics:

http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2010/01/tiny-philippine-island-is-center-of-a-crazy-but-true-natural-wonder.php?page=1

[ornotna]

50. Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay

30 miles south of Washington, D.C.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&z=16&ll=38.471869,-77.268906&spn=0.008114,0.014184&t=k
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/naturalresource/winter2001/ghostship.html

[cbdo2007]

53. Cool! I had never seen that before!

[siligut]

55. Grand Canyon National Park

[Goblinmonger]

58. Vineyards outside Rudesheim on the Rhine

Love this place

[Arugula Latte]

60. kicking

I'm sort of inept at doing this stuff, but I hope smart people will post more.