Around the World with Google Earth

I've just learned about the Google Earth program, which allows you to "fly" (that's really what it looks like) to any location on earth and see a true close-up view from satellite on the location you want to see. I plugged in my home address, and saw our own little two acres, house and barn.

You can zoom in or out, and see what's nearby the location you are interested in. This is a fabulous program for experimentation - how about looking up your next vacation location, or a city you wish to visit? Or, you can look up a specific restaurant, or any other business. You can get directions to places you wish to go to. I'm still exploring Google Earth, but it has a lot of possibilities and it's really fun to "fly" around the world.

For giggles, I just typed in "Great Wall of China", and "flew" over the Pacific Ocean directly to China, landing over the Great Wall itself. I zoomed in and out, and saw other terrain nearby. This is fun!!

I should mention that these satellite photos are not necessarily recent. The two addresses I pulled up were summer-time views. The one of my house showed it with the old roof (we installed a new red roof in Spring 2006), and the view of a friend's home showed a van in their driveway which is only there from Maya through September. If you are searching for the most recent satellite photos, this particular program may not have them.

My computer is about 3-1/2 years old, and probably could use some resolution adjustment to get really clear up-close pictures, so I'm going to try to change that. Newer computers already have the finer resolution, so you might not need to make any changes.

Best of all, Google Earth is FREE. Click here to go to Google Earth for the download and have fun exploring our beautiful Earth!