All of the online maps that I know of will tell you how far it is between two points. I am looking for a map where I tell it a starting point and a direction (maybe a highway number) and a distance and it tells me where that combination gets me.

The purpose is planning a trip, I know I want to drive about 250 miles (pick a number, any number)and want to know where that is. If I am on I-65, where does 250 miles put me? What cities or "points of interest" would be in that area?

If I can find such a map, I can plan food and gas stops and distance covered in a day and the like.

I tried a search engine but obviously don't know what key words work for this kind of query because I'm not getting anything useful.

Anyone know of such a mapping tool?

TIA

Don

i don't have a tool but i often plan as you need to.

what i do is pick a city along, as in your example, I-65. i google map it from my starting point and look at the distance. if it's further than i want to go, i guessimate with a town/city before it and re-google map it. eventually, i figure out where i need to stop.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2006 09:27PM by graylocks.

use google map, and zoom out until you can see 250 miles away. Or get out a paper map and a nice little compass and start drawing circles....

An old school road atlas has distances between major cities. I have not seen one but there should be some online equivalent.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

Go get a AAA membership, then you can get TripTiks, cool maps that tell you how to get anywhere you want, and tell you tons of info.
You go to AAA, tell them you want to go north 250 miles, they'll make you one up on the spot.

BGnR

Upon further investigation, it turns out that Google Earth has an approximation to the task, at least if you are going pretty much straight in one direction.

On the right side of the screen is a readout called "eye alt" with a figure labelled "mi." Checking some known distances, this seems to be a good approximation of the distance, in miles, from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen.

To do what I have in mind, scroll in or out until the ele alt reads the number I am looking for (e.g. 250 miles). Then I move my current location to the bottom of the screen. At the top of the screen is the distance I am looking for. The directions can be rotated so that the highway goes vertically on the google earth screen.

This works reasonably well if I am going that far in one direction, or mostly in that direction. If my 250 miles is 100 miles northbound and 150 miles westbound, this procedure has to be broken down into segments.

But google earth does provide the approximation I was looking for.

i've only used it once, but you can actually do the AAA triptiks yourself online now. it's been over a year since i tried it. i remember thinking the interface was a bit clunky but maybe they've tweaked that since then.


sorry, can't seem to find my bookmark on it at the moment.

TripTik Tour.:
[www.aaa-calif.com]

BGnR